Post by thevon on Oct 9, 2008 21:25:07 GMT 10
Usually I have so many klutz events in one day to pick just one to put on this thread. Today I have just one, but it’s a bewdy.
I met up with Sean and we spent some time checking out a potential new site for SE sloping/ DS near Maleny - meeting the farm owners etc. The ridge didn’t work well, but when we went to Bald Knob later we realized that the wind was really quite E, so we need to check the new site out again on a proper SE day.
At BK Sean got the Bird screaming around nicely at the gate and I gave the Wizard a good checkover after its recent mobile – phone crash nose job. Good thing I did as I had the V-tail servo plugs back to front, which would have made a maiden flight very interesting. I checked and fiddled with the throws and launched it, and as usual it flew fabulously. It DSed nicely, but could have done with more wind. Pete (Wowings) turned up to say Hi at this time.
But the wind got a bit lighter so Sean got the rebuilt Pike up, and it looked great. So I put the big Fazer together, gave it a checkover and added a bit of lead to the nose since I’d moved the CG back at the thermal comp. It flew beautifully and after checking it out on the front I DSed it a bit, but sadly found the wind had moved too far north and the DS effect had gone. So I put the rates back up and porpoised around on the front, then the Fazer stopped responding.
I slapped my pocket but no, the mobile wasn’t there – my first thought after the last 2 phone-related crashes. I held the radio up but there was absolutely no response as the Fazer did a series of gentle sloped loops over the top of the ridge and drifted over the backside, still looping. I waved the radio around, thought “I can’t believe this is happening”, looked at the radio screen (all there) and pressed the radio centre button in case there was some issue there, but the Fazer just kept spiraling around, stalling occasionally then resuming its path. All I could do was watch and pray out loud: “Please, let it land softly!!!” as it wandered over the huge drop below. Then it looped closer back to the hill and I braced myself for it to hit something, and it went in at the bottom of a loop, banked parallel to the slope, and there was no bang. I walked down the hill shaking my head and found the Fazer laying flat in a patch of soft grass, between small trees. It was a miracle.
When I picked it up the nose was hot so I tugged the nose cone off to find the home made battery pack of 4 Sanyo 2700’s smoking and hissing. I switched it off in case there was a short in the plane but the hissing continued so I tried to pull the hot battery out and plop, out came the flat piece of lead which I’d put in earlier … and the hissing stopped. Without thinking I had pushed it in between the front of the battery pack and the foam padding. The pack had only a thin layer of insulation tape covering the rough solder joins … and the lead pressing against it had cut into the tape and shorted the batt pack out. It was so hot we had to knock it out for fear it was going to melt the nose of the plane.
Crazy!
I met up with Sean and we spent some time checking out a potential new site for SE sloping/ DS near Maleny - meeting the farm owners etc. The ridge didn’t work well, but when we went to Bald Knob later we realized that the wind was really quite E, so we need to check the new site out again on a proper SE day.
At BK Sean got the Bird screaming around nicely at the gate and I gave the Wizard a good checkover after its recent mobile – phone crash nose job. Good thing I did as I had the V-tail servo plugs back to front, which would have made a maiden flight very interesting. I checked and fiddled with the throws and launched it, and as usual it flew fabulously. It DSed nicely, but could have done with more wind. Pete (Wowings) turned up to say Hi at this time.
But the wind got a bit lighter so Sean got the rebuilt Pike up, and it looked great. So I put the big Fazer together, gave it a checkover and added a bit of lead to the nose since I’d moved the CG back at the thermal comp. It flew beautifully and after checking it out on the front I DSed it a bit, but sadly found the wind had moved too far north and the DS effect had gone. So I put the rates back up and porpoised around on the front, then the Fazer stopped responding.
I slapped my pocket but no, the mobile wasn’t there – my first thought after the last 2 phone-related crashes. I held the radio up but there was absolutely no response as the Fazer did a series of gentle sloped loops over the top of the ridge and drifted over the backside, still looping. I waved the radio around, thought “I can’t believe this is happening”, looked at the radio screen (all there) and pressed the radio centre button in case there was some issue there, but the Fazer just kept spiraling around, stalling occasionally then resuming its path. All I could do was watch and pray out loud: “Please, let it land softly!!!” as it wandered over the huge drop below. Then it looped closer back to the hill and I braced myself for it to hit something, and it went in at the bottom of a loop, banked parallel to the slope, and there was no bang. I walked down the hill shaking my head and found the Fazer laying flat in a patch of soft grass, between small trees. It was a miracle.
When I picked it up the nose was hot so I tugged the nose cone off to find the home made battery pack of 4 Sanyo 2700’s smoking and hissing. I switched it off in case there was a short in the plane but the hissing continued so I tried to pull the hot battery out and plop, out came the flat piece of lead which I’d put in earlier … and the hissing stopped. Without thinking I had pushed it in between the front of the battery pack and the foam padding. The pack had only a thin layer of insulation tape covering the rough solder joins … and the lead pressing against it had cut into the tape and shorted the batt pack out. It was so hot we had to knock it out for fear it was going to melt the nose of the plane.
Crazy!