Mishaps

Mishaps

- To have your mishaps included in the website, simply email the author! Please carry a camera in your car!!

There have been several mishaps latery. Here are just a few pictures of accidents that were almost all avoidable.

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Early Summer 2003: The Harlow club decided to demonstrate some low flying. All went well for some time. Lower and lower. Down the valley, over the wood, hugging the hills at 5 feet. Then a power dive from about 500 feet. The magnum held it fine. At about 190 mph the hill jumped up 3 feet and bit the magnum! Spectacular. Bits everywhere, they decided to warm up a bit,,,,

Early August 2002: Richard From the Stansted club suffered a structural failure while trying out a new engine. Had been happily flying round when a horrendous crack was heard. The tail section was seen fluttering down and the front ploughed flat out into the newly 'ploughed' field! What a mess. Sorry Richard. We don't like to see all that hard work ending in disaster. For research and development and gluing knowledge only, you can view the wreckage!

Mid August 2002: Chris from the Stumps Cross club lost his brand new model (Well I was actually flying it! I was trying it out before giving him a lesson!) Anyway, not sure what actually happened. Could have been the first case of radio interference at the site. I was coming across the site from right to left level with the ditch. At about 40 feet, the model seemed to go elevator down, by its self. I pulled full back elevator and it recovered a little then went full elevator down! It went flat out into the ditch at about 70 mph. Not a lot left. The engine was buried, the servos were all damaged and the fuselage was unrecogniseable. Sorry Chris!!!! We have still not found out what happened.

7th April 2001: Gary (Website author!) Lost his trusty model the 'Bitza' which John (and Boo Boo) Wilkins from Linton built about seven years ago. I was larking about with John McLaren pulling loop after loop when after about a 15 minute flight it decided to carry on in a straight line. Unfortunately the line was directly towards the Eastern field.

After pulling out the engine and fetching a carrier bag, the model was taken home for accident investigation. It is one thing loosing a model, but it is another thing if the reason is not known. I discovered that although the battery had been completely charged on the field charger and showed a voltage of six volts on the meter, after only 15 minutes, the voltage had dropped to 4.3 volts. Everything still worked with the radio up close, when the radio was moved a few hundred feet away, it went out of range. The battery was probably over 10 years old. When should I have thrown it away??!!!

13th April 2001: Six days after my last crash and only the second in four years, I lost a good model . My 25cc petrol strimmer thing came to a rather sticky end. Again John and I were larking about. We had never flown on a Friday the 13th before! Yes you guessed it - it finally happened. I was traveling South bound at about 400 feet and John was raveling North bound. My model being twice the size Johns Uno- Wot, seemed much further apart. A perspective thing! well they just exploded. In the last 12 years of the hobby, I have not witnessed such an event. My model with its 18 inch wooden propeller chewed its way from the front of Johns engine through to the tail. There was debris all over the sky. Out of this circular mass of colours appeared my model. It was what I could only describe as wobbling! The 4kg engine had stopped probably because the propeller had disintegrated and it went down in what would really be classed as a controlled crash. My models wing was very chewed up and the fin was missing. The model will not fly again - sadly. Johns model was destroyed. The biggest bit was two twelve inch wing tips. The engine (new os46 LA) was mashed and we didn't really find any fuselage, only 'colours'! Oh well never mind!