Nose-In from 4 Feet Off the Deck - GWS pico Tiger Moth

Hello good people!

Like the title says, it was a nose-in from 4 feet onto soft grass.

This happened back on Saturday, August 8th, 2020 at my RC Club and during a 2nd flight focus on landing. I was steady with the controls, especially Elevator control and without moving the stick, it just dived from 4 feet off the deck. Motor stick (8 mm X 10mm) was busted and right inboard top wing sustained a crack / rip. Propeller didn't break (GWS Slow Flyer 8 X 6).

Post crash (hard landing) investigation was undetermined as you all know during a good whack into a nose first crash the Elevator servo usually gets damaged. Well, the strange thing was after making air-frame repairs I took off the wing assembly from the FUSE and tried out the electronics while connecting the battery and observed the Elevator servo making this awful buzzing sound. After you moved the Elevator stick on the Transmitter was when it quit the buzzing and servo moved correctly to both directions.

I went ahead and changed out the 72-Mhz Castle Creations BERG 4-Channel receiver for the Spektrum AR8000 + SAT combo as this is in my opinion the best receiver that Horizon has ever made and wanted rock solid control from now on with my beloved and long discontinued GWS pico Tiger Moth. Even after I replaced RX to the Spektrum AR8000 + SAT, the Elevator servo continued it's buzzing and this time it was not until I turned ON my Spektrum first generation DX7se (Special Edition) that supports 11milli-second frame rate. Once the Transmitter was ON and all was bound then, the servo quit buzzing once I moved the Elevator control stick.

Needless to say, I changed out the long service GWS Narrow Standard servo as the Elevator control for the Hitec HS-55 feather servo which is lighter and still has good torque for keeping the pico Tiger Moth steady in flight. Weight concerns or savings were a wash as the Spektrum Receiver was slightly heavier than the Castle Creation BERG but, since the Hitec HS-55 is lighter, the overall weight difference in what I changed out is minimum and didn't affect Center-of-Gravity issue.

Just sharing like to say that my super narrow 72-Mhz FM has been very reliable and rock solid, however, I had forgotten that my RC Club still has trashy RF issues, especially later in the morning and is exactly when I was flying my pico Tiger Moth. I even seen some 2.4G Spectrum setups go down as well and for this reason I had left my pico Tiger Moth with the 72-Mhz for all these years as thinking that many high powered RF equipment must has moved over to 2.4G and well, I guess not!

My beloved GWS pico Tiger Moth will fly again!