Holy Crap! That is nasty! I can't believe how lucky I am, that my 450 that hit me had foam blades.

Originally Posted by greper

Same thing for pets. I've seen people chasing their cats with micros. Looks and seems like a fun idea until...

One of the (silly) reasons I got interested in helis was to chase the cat. Complete failure: she seems to consider helis as some flying animal so she doesn't run away when a heli is flying close to her. There has been some V911-cat collisions but that didn't change the situation. I will not let V922-cat or Super CP-cat collision occur.

If you can't see it ya can't fly it!
Best wishes& happy flying!

Kawi - Glad that you are getting better.

I got hit in my finger with the blade from my MCPx and it cut very deeply and bled like crazy. I realized then and there that the blades are so sharp and the head speed so high, if it had hit somewhere else, like the carotid artery, I would be dead. Decided then and there no flying near pets or kids. Indeed no flying in small spaces with anyone else around. Never thought about potential eye injury but you brought that one home pretty graphically. I think safety glasses might have to become the rule.

Thanks for sharing and get all healed soon.

Thanks, I appreciate it. I have been getting better. The blood that was visible inside the cornea is pretty much completely gone, or at least not visible to the naked eye. There are no scratches or marks anywhere, or redness on the white part of the eye. If you look at me you would never tell, however, vision has not returned to the damaged eye. I'm basically just waiting for that to come back. If I shut the good eye, everything has a hazy fog all around it, objects with light are still making a halo around them, I cannot read the print that I am typing right now, on the cellphone it's even worse, sentences become single long blurry lines. I can't even identify the apps on my phone, and I had 20/20 with this eye. The worst part is walking around, as the vision starts to come back, it feels like I'm looking through a fishbowl or something. The good eye and bad eye don't coordinate very well and you have the feeling you're looking through somebody's prescription glasses. You get dizzy and feel like you're crossing your eyes. It's very strange.

Every day though it gets just a little bit better. It is always improving and I am quite sure it will all return in time, it's just been unbelievable how vulnerable our eyes are, and how fragile they can be. A small hit can pretty much blind you for months. It's really crazy.


This is two pics about 10 days apart. The first one was a couple days after the injury. It was originally filled with liquid red blood halfway up. The second was a couple of days ago. You can really tell how the blood at the bottom has diminished. It's almost all gone. You can also tell the pupil has elongated somewhat. All that's supposed to go back though.

Originally Posted by Kawi

Thanks, I appreciate it. I have been getting better. The blood that was visible inside the cornea is pretty much completely gone, or at least not visible to the naked eye. There are no scratches or marks anywhere, or redness on the white part of the eye. If you look at me you would never tell, however, vision has not returned to the damaged eye. I'm basically just waiting for that to come back. If I shut the good eye, everything has a hazy fog all around it, objects with light are still making a halo around them, I cannot read the print that I am typing right now, on the cellphone it's even worse, sentences become single long blurry lines. I can't even identify the apps on my phone, and I had 20/20 with this eye. The worst part is walking around, as the vision starts to come back, it feels like I'm looking through a fishbowl or something. The good eye and bad eye don't coordinate very well and you have the feeling you're looking through somebody's prescription glasses. You get dizzy and feel like you're crossing your eyes. It's very strange.

Every day though it gets just a little bit better. It is always improving and I am quite sure it will all return in time, it's just been unbelievable how vulnerable our eyes are, and how fragile they can be. A small hit can pretty much blind you for months. It's really crazy.


This is two pics about 10 days apart. The first one was a couple days after the injury. It was originally filled with liquid red blood halfway up. The second was a couple of days ago. You can really tell how the blood at the bottom has diminished. It's almost all gone. You can also tell the pupil has elongated somewhat. All that's supposed to go back though.

That certainly looks much better. The most important thing is that the central area of the cornea was not involved. Otherwise, there are bound to be residue effects on vision.

A few years ago, the owner of a LHS here got completely blinded in one eye and partially blinded in another while fixing a 450 in his shop. This just shows even high experienced people are at risk.

Thank you for sharing this, and i'm sorry you had to go through it. I took a friend of mine to the hospital last week because some idiot flew an FPV radian into him while he was standing in the parking lot and the prop cut halfway through the finger and halfway through the bone.

I hope this makes people think more about safety when operating their models.

"You'll shoot your eye out" is being replaced with "you'll cut your eye out with an RC helicopter blade" by moms everywhere.

Hello Kawi, I just started reading this post, I cringed as I read your first post. But Iam glad your vision is returning and your prognosis is positive. I just wanted to share with you that many years ago I had an operation on my eye to place a plastic insert to alleviate a genetic eye condition I have, so I can relate to your experience and recovery pattern, I also wanted to tell you that healing time on an eye takes a long time, initially many months, with the eyesight improving on a daily basis, but healing will slow down, for me, total healing to stable vision took 2 years.

So don't despair buddy, just take it in your stride, worst case may be glasses for a while. Much better than no eye.

I can relate to your pain. Some years ago while sleeping with my wife and our small dog, I woke up in the night; as I opened my eyes I saw something coming at me then wham. Our dog was scracthing next to me as I opened my eye wha ti saw was her foot going right intyo my eye.There was an explosion of pain in my right eye. My wife is a nurse practioner( like a Dr.) she patched it and after just a few minutes the pain was too much to take. We went to the ER and like you I was told multiple scratches and cuts. The Dr said he could see 4clwa marks across my eye. They patched it and sent us home..By morning I could not stand the pain so I calle dmy eye Dr and he had me come in. After looking at it he said I woukd have been blind in a few more hours had I not come in. After some work and drops he put a neutral contact in and that contact eased the pain. No pun intended Watch your eyes folks.
I have to say many times I am hovering my helis right in front of my face to see balde tracking and to see if swash is level and servos worknong smoothly while in flight

jack.....
Like you, I TOO OFTEN fly my birds too close to me to "check things" like tracking, balance, vibes, etc. It's really a bad habit we've gotten into!!!
I DO wear safety glasses....but the heli doesn't understand that these only protect the EYES!!! The rest of your body is a prime target....with LOTS of soft, easily damaged flesh!!!
Perhaps, like the heli adage: "Fly at least 3 mistakes high" - in reference to bail-out.....we should add: "Fly at LEAST 3 mistakes AWAY"......!!
Like the guy said in "Hill Street Blues" at the end of roll-call:
"Let's be careful out there......"!!

I'm hearing about a lot of people who had serious eye damage done by the claws of their pet, there seems to be a real hazard there you'd never expect.

Macue, thanks for sharing your personal story, I'm kinda relieved to hear that the recovery time being long is normal, because 2 and half weeks later I'm starting to get a bit nervous! I downloaded this app on my phone soon after the injury and it's an eye chart. I extend my arm as far as it can go and try to read it at the same exact length, just for consistency, and I can tell it's getting better, it's got eight levels, starting at 20/200 and ending at 20/20. The top line is a giant letter, if you can't read that you're basically blind, and at first I couldn't read it, but as the days went by I started being able to read the next line down and so on and so on. It takes soooo long to get better. I'm almost there, but even today, two and a half weeks later, even though all the surface damage has completely healed and vision is pretty much normal using 2 eyes, I still am not able to read small print with the injured eye. I can't make out one word in a magazine or newspaper, or texting on my phone. Its just amazing how much damage you can do in a split second.

@kawi, i am glad to hear that sharing of my experience has helped you, i know it can be really nerve raking. just give it time. coincidentally, is the reason why you cant see fine detail that it's foggy, blurry or distorted (you see multiple of the one thing, like 5ghost lights around a source)?

also BTW, my optometrist tells me that if vision on one eye is more than 3lines (chart lines) better then the other, than the eye with the better vision takes over, that's why you can see just fine with both eyes open. dont worry, this too is normal.

anyway, hope you eventually make a full recovery, all the best.

Originally Posted by Arr0wHead

I think we all read the OP, but thanks for the re-cap.

It may be serious, but you wouldn't be embarrassed telling a doctor you hit yourself in the face with a helicopter? I dunno. Been in the ER with much worse injuries and managed to find some humor in it. Maybe that's just me. You were meant to chuckle at my comment, not sermonize.

I laughed a bit.

Glad to hear you are okay... I always wear safety glasses when I fly.