Hi! I lost my EasyGlider 4 yesterday.
I wanted to land because the wind got too strong and gusty. A rider with her horse passed my landing area and took her time to watch me flying - or more and more fighting the wind - nice! :-)

After she was gone I wanted to take my chance but suddenly the elevator was stuck in upward position and the plane started to loop and loop and loop. With throttle control I could keep her from crashing for a while but the wind took it farther away so I barely couldn't see her anymore. Then behind a group of trees the EasyGlider crashed into a high field. No way to find it again.

I had quite some time too react since I could keep the plane in the sky for a while but I had no idea what to do.
What would you do to save your plane? Roll it while it loops?

A friend of mine who is a 1:1 glider pilot was watching the situation and told me afterwards that this is the exact situation when he would get out of his plane with a parachute.

Any ideas?

Peter

I would do as you suggested and put it into a roll. At least this way you would have some vertical control over it. Use the throttle to bring it down.
Be interesting to do this on a simulator to see what kind of control reaction you would get, or require

Gord

With the elevator servo failed like that there's really not much you can do. At least you tried to do SOMETHING to aid in minimizing the damage.

A variation on Flypaper's idea is to put it into a steep turn with no throttle so it glides down in the turn all the way to the ground. But that's hardly a good way to "arrive" either. But at least it limits the drift with the wind and the walk to pick up the pieces.

The natural reaction would probably be to avoid a crash, but there comes a time when a crash or a lost model needs a quick decision.

If you had killed the throttle, the model would have probably just gone in to a zoom-stall-zoom-stall glide, and lose height. If it was then possible to keep it pointing in to wind it may have 'landed' within view.

Back many years ago when flying single channel models, (rudder only), the only way to penetrate back up wind was to use the hard left and right rudder to half roll letting the nose drop in each half turn, but not allow a 'zoom' to occur which might increase height.

But like all, 'oh no' situations, it's easier to think what to do long after the event happened.

Ray.

My advice in a situation like that is to immediately close the throttle.
As sflightray says the plane will go into a series of zoom and stalls. It will loose height quite fast but not too fast which gives you time to think.
More important when the plane is not actually in the stall you should be able to keep it more or less facing onto the wind so it should not drift too far. In addition by facing into the wind should reduce the speed of final impact with the ground!
And yes it has happened to me!

A bit unusual to fail full up. Is it possible the linkage 'jammed' when at the extremes of deflection? It is important to ensure that any servo is free to reach its natural travel limit and not be restrained by the linkage geometry.

Had an ail. servo go to full up one time. I gave full up on the other ail to compensate for it. It would fly straight with no ail input. I ended up steering it with rudder for a rough landing. No damage luckily.

Gord.

Thanks, guys!
To try on a sim is a good idea. I will do this.
To crash it would have been another possibility. The damage would be not as much since the MPX can take lots of abuse. The problem was, the plane was to far away to find it again so I tried to get it closer.

Should I get another EasyGlider or a Heron, what do you think?

Originally Posted by PeterAndAlex

Thanks, guys!
To try on a sim is a good idea. I will do this.
To crash it would have been another possibility. The damage would be not as much since the MPX can take lots of abuse. The problem was, the plane was to far away to find it again so I tried to get it closer.

Should I get another EasyGlider or a Heron, what do you think?

I would get a ParkZone Radian.

Glen

Cut the throttle, then keep rolling left and right for a nice, controlled, steady descent. Not easy if you only have half a second before you crash, but if your plane is just pulling loops in the sky for some time then the reaction time and altitude should be a problem.

The plane is back home!!!
Now, after more than a month and after buying another EasyGlider we found the plane.
My son Alex was having fun with his Beaver 2000 and before take off I put a Mobius cam on.
On the next day he wanted to edit the video and suddenly shouted: "Look here!". Far down in the middle of a grain field there was the shape of a little EasyGlider! It went about 1,5 km before crashing. We picked it up a few minutes later.

The damage is close to nothing. The nose needed a little boiling and looks almost like new now.
It seems the elevator pushrod stuck in the control horn.
Now we have 2 EasyGliders. Not the biggest problem since I like this plane very much.
I want to "remaiden" her this weekend.

Thanks to all of you for taking time to read and answer my questions!

Peter

Congratulations! Great recovery.

Glen