[NSRCA-discussion] Stupid accident

Mon Aug 24 07:02:30 AKDT 2009

Yeah but that only happens on the first (and last) flight of a new airplane. LOL Once you get the plane trimmed out it's probably OK to just wiggle the sticks and make sure everything moves.

Here's another thing that can go wrong without being noticed: how many times have you plugged each aileron into the wrong channel? In other words the left aileron gets plugged into the channel that's programmed for the right aileron and vise versa. This doesn't reverse the direction but the trim gets messed up. A trick that I learned from Joe Lachowski was to use JR extensions on one servo and Rx channel and Futaba extensions on the other. It's pretty hard to plug the wrong servo in this way even if you're wiring is a chaotic mess.

John Pavlick

--- On Mon, 8/24/09, Jay Marshall <lightfoot at sc.rr.com> wrote:

From: Jay Marshall <lightfoot at sc.rr.com>
Subject: Re: [NSRCA-discussion] Stupid accident
To: "'General pattern discussion'" <nsrca-discussion at lists.nsrca.org>
Date: Monday, August 24, 2009, 10:35 AM

Just “wiggling” doesn’t do it. After changing servos, I “wiggled” and everything was fine .. until airborne. The new servos rotated the opposite direction and the ailerons were reversed! 

Jay Marshall 
-----Original Message-----
From: nsrca-discussion-bounces at lists.nsrca.org [mailto:nsrca-discussion-bounces at lists.nsrca.org] On Behalf Of Richard Strickland
Sent: Monday, August 24, 2009 10:28 AM
To: General pattern discussion
Subject: Re: [NSRCA-discussion] Stupid accident

There was an old saw about pilots who had landed gear up this reminds me of: "There are two types of pilots--those that have landed gear up and those that are going to.." And then a few--well actually many years ago--there was another article in FLYING by a guy who had landed gear up for the second time...  So he changed it to: "There are three types of pilots--those that have, those that are going to--and those that are going to again..."  
I lost a perfect Tipo 750 way back and a nice Temptation more recently by not plugging in the ailerons and was distracted both times during assembly--and not wiggling the surfaces prior to take-off.
RS

From: jpavlick at idseng.com
To: nsrca-discussion at lists.nsrca.org
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 2009 00:53:11 -0400
Subject: Re: [NSRCA-discussion] Stupid accident

Been there done that. But only once... so far...

John Pavlick
http://www.idseng.com

----- Original Message ----- 

From: Ronald Van Putte 

To: Jim Quinn ; General pattern discussion 

Sent: Saturday, August 22, 2009 5:50 PM

Subject: Re: [NSRCA-discussion] Stupid accident

My favorite "trick" is to neglect to attach the aileron servo connections if I am disturbed while assembling the airplane.  Consequently, John Fuqua asks me to "wiggle the sticks" before carrying the airplane out; it's saved my airplane twice already. 

Ron VP

On Aug 22, 2009, at 4:44 PM, Jim Quinn wrote:

Wow! I saw these planes at Toledo and the Nats! I'm really sorry. They were/are beautiful trophy winners in Toledo. I agree with Don, make a routine and stick with it. A good budfdfy of mine recently had 9 stitches from a mini electric (smaller than a 1/2 glow) when his throttle went to high, he grabbed the wing and the plane spun around and struck his hand. 

Jim Quinn 

From: "Atwood, Mark" <atwoodm at paragon-inc.com>
To: General pattern discussion <nsrca-discussion at lists.nsrca.org>
Sent: Saturday, August 22, 2009 2:45:03 PM
Subject: [NSRCA-discussion] Stupid accident

Hey All,

Had a bad morning this morning because I got careless, and because I altered my normal habits. I normally have my neck strap tucked into my shirt starting the airplane, but this morning I simply clipped it onto the Tx while it was sitting on the ground.   Started my primary Black Magic, had it sitting on idle, picked up my Tx and somehow turned the Tx funny such that the strap bumped the throttle…enough to make the plane jump forward startling me.  In the split second that I moved to catch it, the strap moved the throttle higher and before I could recover it, it slammed the wing into the table next to me hard enough to snap the entire fuselage into two pieces.  

I was very fortunate that no one was injured and that no other equipment was damaged, but I was crushed to watch (in slow motion of course) such catastrophic damage occur to the plane.  They’re just not meant for that type of abrupt side load.

Anyhow, just wanted to throw out the warning.  I’ve picked up my tx 1000 times without incident, but seldom do I have the strap attached.  Just not my routine. But one odd movement can make things go VERY wrong, VERY fast.  Be careful, be methodical, and don’t change your habits.

Mark
PS, probably repairable over the winter.  Fuse is in 2 pieces with a lot of damage, and the wing that hit is pretty messed up.  It’ll be a project for sure.  

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