T-IFO vertical dive crash

[MikeTwain]

I switched out my 1047 for the 9070 to get a bit more speed for my rolls tonight, but I got a bit overconfident and decided to try an outside loop. What I found out unfortunately is that I don't have enough down elevator dialed in to do an outside loop. Especially not at the speed and height I was at.

By the time I got to the bottom of the loop and the plane was inverted and parallel to the ground, I was probably only at about 5 feet. Then I panicked and did what I normally do to abort out of a failed outer loop...I pulled back hard to transition to an inner loop.

This slammed my T-IFO (modded to elevon control) head first into the ground.

I was pretty worried because two of the cross bars used for mounting the electronics had become unglued and one of the rear trailing edges had also become unglued.

The saving grace was the awesome front design whereby the leading edge cf rods are attached at the front merely using two pieces of tubing that both the left and right leading edge cf tubes slide into and past each other. The impact merely slid these two rods even farther past each other.

I had it fixed in about 10 minutes and I was out flying again.

Unbelievable little bird!

[altur]

Hey Mike - reading your post took me back about 35 yrs. I did much the same thing with a 60 powered 'Crusader' ( Ralph Brooke's World Champ winning design) Practising for a display, I set the model up at about 100 ft and rolled over and dived to pull out in a loop. Next time around, I thought I would liven things up and pull out inverted. However, I temporarily forgot this as I put it vertical, then remembered and pushed inverted, realised I had lost too much height and pulled Up and straight into the dirt. (Bummer of a feeling isn't it?). Needed a shovel for that one! :D

However, the story has a sequel.

As I was going out to fly the next week, my wife said to me "'don't forget your hay fever tablet", When I looked at it I said to her " the one you gave me last week was blue - have they changed the colour to orange? She turned a little pale and said " No that one was a different one - Denise (wife of my air force CO ) gave it to me for you to try - they are very good, but Keith found they made him dizzy and he couldn't concentrate". :o :o

Would you believe we are still married??????

ps I thought IFO's would loop in 5 ft? :D

[MikeTwain]

This is what happens when I do a normal inner loop:

1) Pull back on the stick.

2) IFO instantly comes to a complete stop in midair

3) IFO rotates about its horizontal axis, "looping" through 360 degrees while hanging in midair

4) Once the IFO returns to the upright position, it continues on it's way by returning instantly to its previous speed.

:D

Seriously though, inner loops with my IFO are really really tight. I have managed somehow to get quite a bit more up elevator than down elevator due to the way my throws are set up. This makes for extremely tight inner loops and the thing turns on a dime, but it's all over for outer loops.


:)

Sorry to hear about your plane, although the part about your wife and your commanding officer trying to poison you is also very sad too.

;)

[altur]

Mike - agree completely.:D