Last Saturday, the local R/C club had our spring, scale fly in. I took four of my helicopters with me and brought two home in tact. The big has some minor damage, but the little Airwolf was destroyed.
I took the mechanics out of the fuselage and started searching for the cause of the crash. It took several days, but I finally found the problem. I made a mistake in the set up when I changed a servo out. This mistake caused a loss of tail control and the crash.
Through out this week, I've been rebuilding it back to it's original, "pod & boom" configuration. Yesterday, I was doing the final testing to make sure everything was right. Now I'm the first to admit, I should not have been testing it like I was; kids don't do this at home! I was running it up to about half power on the bench without the main blades attached. All was going well and I was pretty well convinced the problem had been solved and corrected. I jumped the power up a bit more and gave a hard rudder command. It responded in spades and started to slide toward the edge of the bench. I went to grab the skids, but was too high and got wacked by the flybar paddles! I thought for a moment I had broke two fingers!
I got the fingers Iced down pretty quick and then went back out to the shop to clean up the blood and assess the damage to the helo. Damage report as follows:
1. Middle and ring finger of left hand BADLY bruised and very sore, especially from the first joint to the tips.
2. Finger nail on middle finger baldy split and generally chewed up. Not sure if I'll loose it.
3. Flybar on the T-Rex bent into a pretty "S" bend!
4. Ego VERY BADLY bruised!
On the plus side, I had a spare flybar so I was able to repair the damage to the helo after the swelling went down and I could bend the ends of my fingers again.
No matter what the hobby, if it includes spinning objects, you can be bit, so be careful!
I took the mechanics out of the fuselage and started searching for the cause of the crash. It took several days, but I finally found the problem. I made a mistake in the set up when I changed a servo out. This mistake caused a loss of tail control and the crash.
Through out this week, I've been rebuilding it back to it's original, "pod & boom" configuration. Yesterday, I was doing the final testing to make sure everything was right. Now I'm the first to admit, I should not have been testing it like I was; kids don't do this at home! I was running it up to about half power on the bench without the main blades attached. All was going well and I was pretty well convinced the problem had been solved and corrected. I jumped the power up a bit more and gave a hard rudder command. It responded in spades and started to slide toward the edge of the bench. I went to grab the skids, but was too high and got wacked by the flybar paddles! I thought for a moment I had broke two fingers!
I got the fingers Iced down pretty quick and then went back out to the shop to clean up the blood and assess the damage to the helo. Damage report as follows:
1. Middle and ring finger of left hand BADLY bruised and very sore, especially from the first joint to the tips.
2. Finger nail on middle finger baldy split and generally chewed up. Not sure if I'll loose it.
3. Flybar on the T-Rex bent into a pretty "S" bend!
4. Ego VERY BADLY bruised!
On the plus side, I had a spare flybar so I was able to repair the damage to the helo after the swelling went down and I could bend the ends of my fingers again.
No matter what the hobby, if it includes spinning objects, you can be bit, so be careful!
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