... me, of course. 🙄

While flying my UMX Radian indoors last week, I'd banged it up pretty badly, hitting all of the obstacles dangling from the roof. Most of the wear and tear was external and was easily fixed with some CA and tape. Unfortunately, though, I'd landed hard on the nose and broke the motor-to-fuselage bond. It was still flyable, but I needed to fix the motor mount. Zip, zip with the Xacto and the fuselage was apart. I finished prying the motor loose, then rebonded it with CA.. I decided that a sliver of foam CA'd behind the motor mount would help fasten the motor in place even better. So, a little dribble of thin CA on the re-enforcing foam and all would be good.

I let the plane rest for 10 minutes or so, slightly nose up, to let the CA set. Pushing on the motor, convinced me that it was bonded in place well enough for me to tape the fuselage back together. Nice, neat taping job, and she was good as new. Fired up the Tx, slapped a batt in her, and everything worked fine.

I'm not sure exactly what I did next, but it had to have involved orienting the Radian nose down. Inadvertently, my hand bumped into the prop... but the prop didn't spin. I instantly knew what had happened. There had obviously been a small puddle of CA sitting in the motor chamber, and that CA had found its way into the motor gears. "Kristy! <my wife> I need some nail polish remover!" And I'm franticly cutting the fuselage back apart. Yep, the...Continue Reading

In my professional career, I've got a BS and MS in mechanical engineering, and I work as an aerospace engineer in spacecraft propulsion systems, although now I'm a supervisor; so, I don't actually do anything constructive. <grin> I grew up as an Air Force brat. WWII fighter aircraft have always been a passion of mine, especially fighters of the Luftwaffe. So, I've been around aircraft all of my life. I know a lot of theory of aircraft flight mechanics, but am lacking in the gut feel and auto reactions for RC airplane control. My main hobby for the last decade and a half has been high-power model rocketry (previously and again serving as the president of our local rocketry club, the Huntsville Area Rocketry Association (HARA, www.hararocketry.org)). I'd dabbled a bit in RC electrics around 2004, but after dinging up the front end of my Typhoon 3D, I had set it on the shelf, and soon forgot about it for 15 years.

In Sept 2015, I was browsing my LHS and an Eflite Adagio BNF caught my eye. 2 Days later, I walked back into the LHS and snagged the Adagio, a DX5e, and a couple Eflite 3S-450s. I took the Adagio to a soy bean field to retrain my thumbs and eyes for RC. The soybean field was a really good idea because I had quite a few abrupt and very unplanned landings. After redeveloping a basic feel for RC aircraft control, I flew the Adagio in my yard, twice having my neighbors roof jump up and grab my plane and another time having a tree swat it out of the air.

...Continue Reading