So I was out flying today, its a nice day here in pittsburgh, a little windy, but nothing I cant handle. Was in the park I always fly in. I was about halfway through my third battery when my transmitter suddenly started giving the low battery beep at me. When I started the day I had a 9.5 power reading, it usually starts beeping when it dips below 9.0. Under normal circumstances this is really not a big deal, I can fly for a while below 9.0, but I must have had a battery go bad or something. As soon as it started beeping I looked down at it and it said 8.3 (woah). Looked up at the bird and started heading back. There was a wind so I had to fight it a little to get home. All of a sudden the transmitter went dead, as soon as it did my helicopter shot up to full throttle and gained a huge amount of altitude, the wind blew it about 90 yards away from me and it hit the grass upside down at an angle at full throttle. When I walked up to it the motor was still racing but the teeth were stripped off of the main gear, but I had to carefully pull the battery because if the gear would have moved to a point where there were teeth the blades would have jerked on me.

As far as damage goes, I got lucky, it was pretty banged up, but could have been worse. It tore the heck out of the turf.

1 tail boom
1 set of blades
1 set of landing skids
1 main shaft
1 tail shaft
1 tail drive belt (my boom was so twisted I had to cut the belt to get it off because I could not release the tension)
1 bottom plate
1 tail stabilizer
1 main gear
1 set of boom braces

Spent 60.00 to replenish my part stock and replace the parts I didnt have (I keep a pretty large stock because I hate waiting for parts). Every time I have to replace something I buy 2 so I have one for next time.

I was able to replace everything except for my bottom plate and boom braces out of my parts stock. But the bottom plate is useable until a replacement arrives and the boom braces were glued and drying overnight.

It looks ok on the bench, will fly it tomorrow and we will see if anything else needs replaced.

What a day!

I had a day like last week...only mine was a straight up dumb thumb. Was doing an invert hover and wife starts yammering at me. Loss of concentration cost "us" about $60 in damage to my 500e. That'll teach her to just hush and watch..

LOL - Damn wives, I leave mine at home when I fly, she is paranoid about being hit with the helicopter for some reason. She starts screaming if it even heads towards her side of the hemisphere.

My two year old on the other hand just holds onto my pant leg (so i know she is there) and says "daddy fly up" "daddy fly down" along with the usual toddler banter. But she loves the helicopter so much she behaves herself. I cant wait until she can fly a helicopter.

The good news is that the steelers beat the Ravens!

Ahhhhh good story RF......those were the best years when raising my kids. ( the pant leg years) and funny about your wife wanting to be no where close. Ha...I think at times my wife gets a lil bored of it all, and I have to remind her of the days when I was lucky to just hover off a sidewalk curb for 5 seconds. .....typical Steelers smash mouth game today with the ravens. my bad for putting my bet on the ravens today..batch did a great job. ...yeah I lost money ther as well.. just not a good week for "us" ...lol...

Originally Posted by Dejavu*Xion

Ahhhhh good story RF......those were the best years when raising my kids. ( the pant leg years) and funny about your wife wanting to be no where close. Ha...I think at times my wife gets a lil bored of it all, and I have to remind her of the days when I was lucky to just hover off a sidewalk curb for 5 seconds. .....typical Steelers smash mouth game today with the ravens. my bad for putting my bet on the ravens today..batch did a great job. ...yeah I lost money ther as well.. just not a good week for "us" ...lol...

Betting against them is usually a smart move, they rarely ever cover the spread when they are favored to win.

Problem is - Battery can be down on capacity - but the voltage at rest does not reflect this , but once under load [ use ] for a while the voltage can drop rather badly , if you discharge a lot of batteries you can see this ...

It will hold a certain voltage level till its almost dry and then start dropping voltage quickly .

My Batteries have been @ 9.5v for over a month now , so Im expecting voltage to start dropping on me soon

That sucks RF!

Originally Posted by old4570

Problem is - Battery can be down on capacity - but the voltage at rest does not reflect this , but once under load [ use ] for a while the voltage can drop rather badly , if you discharge a lot of batteries you can see this ...

It will hold a certain voltage level till its almost dry and then start dropping voltage quickly .

My Batteries have been @ 9.5v for over a month now , so Im expecting voltage to start dropping on me soon

The radio battery is under a constant load unless you're running it as a trainer box - so this didn't happen because of sudden increase in load. I suspect it happened because of discharge curve and battery quality - when the battery quality goes down either due to bad initial quality or wear, the 'end' of the discharge curve gets steeper - the drop-off happens faster. So, I would suggest topping off the battery when it shows 9.0 - I usually never let mine get that low. I use an A123 pack, so when it gets low, I can charge it in like 10 minutes.

Sorry to hear that, it's never fun watching your helicopter hit the ground and there is nothing you can do about it. Failures suck!

that sure sucks but the title of this thread is a little misleading.....

being shot down means someone turns on their TX on the same channel as yours and you lose control (back when 72 is what we used and some still do)....no?

what you did was let your TX battery get to low....

Originally Posted by ptflyer

that sure sucks but the title of this thread is a little misleading.....

being shot down means someone turns on their TX on the same channel as yours and you lose control (back when 72 is what we used and some still do)....no?

what you did was let your TX battery get to low....

I thought someone literally shot his heli down with a gun. Heli-skeet

Originally Posted by finguz

I thought someone literally shot his heli down with a gun. Heli-skeet

One of these days I'm gonna go do this...

Shooting RC Planes with Machine Guns at Big Sandy Range 2010 (9 min 33 sec)

Originally Posted by jasmine2501

So, I would suggest topping off the battery when it shows 9.0 - I usually never let mine get that low. I use an A123 pack, so when it gets low, I can charge it in like 10 minutes.

If mine gets to 9.5, the next time I turn on the transmitter it changes to mode 1. My alarm is set at 9.8 and when it goes off I'm done flying.

The OP failed to perform a "failsafe" thus resulted in full throttle when connection between tx and rx was lost. Always perform the "failsafe" as the final set up step.

Originally Posted by karlik

If mine gets to 9.5, the next time I turn on the transmitter it changes to mode 1. My alarm is set at 9.8 and when it goes off I'm done flying.

Wow, crazy.

What brand tx's guys?

Jas, it's amazing how many rounds missed in that vid (I didn't watch the whole thing though I admit).

Chopper, I think your right.