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| Wireless | Senior Heliman - Location: Vaud, Switzerland - |
Hi Guys,
Some of you might know that I am big into my Kyosho Concepts. I have emigrated recently and just got around to having the time to rebuild one of my helis for flight (most are shelf-queens for display).
I took out a lovely Concept 30 SX. She's very clean with all matching period Futaba r/c gear, FP154 mechanical gyro etc and some brand new carbon mains. The engine in the heli was an MDS 38 and personally, I don't rate those paperweights so I junked it in favour of a brand new, box fresh OS37. I completely stripped and rebuilt the heli, went over her with a fine-tooth comb and best of all she was looking wonderful with her original Kyosho Jet Ranger fuselage.
Well, after many hours of prep and a thorough pre-flight, I went out to the garage to fire her up and break in the motor. She started up right away and was running sweetly. I ran a couple of tanks through nice and rich, just spooling her up every so often, checking radio range, control sense etc.
The time came to go see whether she flew. I am rusty, I hadn't flown for 6 months prior to the day previous when I took out my Rappy 30 v2 to break in another brand new OS37 I just put in that. I was therefore taking it nice and easy, got the mixture set good, nice and steady into the hover. Wow, the bird was so stable...! Rotor rpm felt a little high, so set her down and adjusted the curves a little. Back into the hover, so damn smooth, even for such an old girl with the mechanical gyro far better than I had expected, the OS37 just sat in a sweet spot chiming away.
I made a couple of turns, hovered her at 90° either way, a couple of small very low speed circuits and back into the hover. I was admiring how great the simple bleach-bottle Jet Ranger fuselage looked whilst in the air when it all went t*ts up. I saw a brief flash from the tail. One of the blades had let go. Well, just out of ground effect there was no chance to save her. She spun 180° but landed lightly. Unfortunately, the twisting force tipped her over. Luckily the engine stopped dead but the mains tore hell out of the boom. The sad part is the JR shell C parts (tail boom section) got all busted into a thousand pieces.
Disconsolate, I picked up the old girl and carried her in my arms back to the garage. It felt like I just found my pet dog run over in the street. Damage list is: JR shell C parts, tail boom, drive wire, linkages, tail pitch lever, main blades, stabiliser bar, main shaft and a torn out ball link. I guess I was lucky.
I found the tail blade that busted loose. It had flown about 30 feet away but I spotted it easily on the short grass. It had fractured near the root.
This is only the second heli that I have crashed in 5 years of flying. Both accidents were beyond my control (first was a C60 where the pitch servo potentiometer let go).
So what can you learn from this...? Change your tail blades regularly...! There was no sign of any nicks or fractures on the tail blades prior to flight. I am a sucker for pre-flighting to the nth degree (once found a trailing link casting fractured on a full-size aircraft I was about to get in and fly so I am very careful these days). I thoroughly checked the tail blades and they looked perfect (I had then un-mounted and checked them over in detail whilst rebuilding and checked again during pre-flight). I am 99% sure it was just age that got these ones. For all I know they could have been on the heli 10 years. For a $5 part I lost a lovely old helicopter.
Fear not because she will fly again...!
Sad pics below. Concept lovers, look away now...
You can see my collection of Concepts and Spares at: www.concept30.co.uk |
| 02-12-2008 08:25 PM | | | |
