rcjon

On it's 25th tank, my beautiful Raptor Titan 50 had an encounter of the Terra Firma kind. Or as stated by a wag at the field, "It just wadded up and beat itself to death.".

I could say it was radio interference, I could say it was a mechanical failure, I could say "God smote my copter", but I think the cause was the nut on the stick.

I was hovering close to the ground nose in and went to turn it away from me - almost ready to land and quit for the day. Winds were light and variable, maybe there was a low gust or something - whatever, I think I yinged when I should have yanged and the the heli pitched to the right and the blades hit the ground.

One of the first things to happen must have been that the blades hit the antenna. The receiver was recovered about 10 feet from the main wreckage, sans antenna wire. As a result I couldn't kill the engine, so it flopped around for a while. Fortunately, the main tank was also ejected so it quit when the header tank was out of fuel.

Preliminary damage assessment - blades, flybar, blade grips, boom, boom supports, tail feathers, tail assembly (5 of us never found a trace of the tail assembly in a shortly mowed grass field!) Clutch may be burnt out.

Engine doesn't appear cooked and hopefully electronics are ok except for the receiver.

Why was I hovering so close to the ground???

AutoMike

Ouch! I feel your pain, my R60 is in the same sorry state on my shop floor right now[&o].The bill without the cost of blades is about 125. I'll beat around on the woodies till I find a deal on Fee-Bay. I am trying to get the invert hover down and I broke my own rule about keeping enough altitude for a safe bail out. Oh, well. Try and try again right?