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Thread OP
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My Simple 400 turned into a missile! (Or how NOT to land!)
Ohhhhh, that last crash hurt.
With a Jamara 480 and NINE 600AE cells, my Simple 400 was hot. Too hot. After a nice turn, it somehow ended up upside down. I recovered for about 1 second, and for some reason it spun over my head, into the pit area at my field, and nose dived at full throttle into the snow/frozen ground. Good thing I reinforced the body. At full speed, it only snapped the fuselage in one spot. The Jamara 480 (which took a month to find) is toast, the shaft is bent. One of the 600AE cell is squished flat! The receiver shot out of the plane, RIPPING the servo leads off two HS-55 servos (at $25 each!). Ouch! The two servos in the wings survived nicely! The nice folding CAM prop is in pieces. The foam wing survived because I used rubber bands! What a cool mod! All this, and I luckily missed another plane on the ground by 6 inches! I missed the people in the pit area by 4 feet. I missed the cars in the pit area by 3 feet. I'm lucky my club still lets me fly there! What a lucky day! It could have been much worse! At least this will give me the ability to redesign the plane! |
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ouch
Well, you have a good attitude for just losing a plane, perhaps because you do realize how bad it could have been.
Two years ago at our little Labor Day fly (all of 4 people brought planes) one of the bigger glow planes went awry after liftoff and careened into the parking area only missing vehicles and people by inches.. It happens. Best wishes for your new design. Al |
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Welcome to Simple land. You have to be one of a million
pilots that has lost control of the Simple. They are fast if your not used to it. It was a blessing that no one was injured; but, if you asked your flying buddies (ex-buddies) they have all done it. Try - try again . Randy |
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On the topic of close calls I have one. And no I wasn't the pilot
I was out at a very informal glow field with my friend, a glow flyer. I was just sitting on this little bench in the pit area. The day was going pretty slow and there was only one plane in the air, a guy's LT-40. Anyway I was sort of watching what was going on but kinda nodding off. All of the sudden it is pretty quiet so I look around and sure enough the guys motor is out and he is deadsticking it. Well anyway this guy ain't such a great pilot and so everyone except me was standing beside him (See where this is going!) So I watch the plane than the people than the plane. Next time I look at the people they are sort of jumping and waving, gee I wonder what this means? I look back at the plane and it is 6 feet away booking straight at me! I duck and my head goes in between the landing gear (boy was I glad he converted it to a tail-dragger!) Anyway I avoided the plane and it hit the barbwire fence behind me, the fence nearly cut the wings off, so it was moving pretty good. Well that is the end of the story, and I haven't seen him since. Cheers, Grant |
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