Hoagie1
Veteran
Location: Redmond, WA
| I came out to the field pretty late yesterday to get off a flight or two. First flight was fine. Second flight, I moved to the right side of the field because another guy was hovering on the opposite side.
It was maybe 3 min into the flight I was performing a stall turn, leveling off and slowing down about 50 feet up on the right side of the field in the weeds, when I saw the tail move slowly on its own. I distinctly remember thinking, "Oh so this is what a buddy was talking about when his 'tail is blowing out'". I then moved the rudder sticks to compensate with no avail, then a second later, it goes into a medium pirouette, a second later, I hit the throttle hold, but by this time, it was going down spinning. Lost it in the tall weeds before I could flare- if I could.
I'm thinking last night, it might be power. I won't know until I take a 10X pair of loupes to all the wire connections and taken apart battery and switch pack. I'm trying to rule out FailSafe because 1) it was a brand new receiver 2) no one else is having problems. Here's my guess to what was happening...
When the tail was slowly moving on it's own, power may have been interrupted, freezing the tail servo. During this time, I had no control as the receiver is powering up, along with the gyro going through initialization. With the combination of me swishing the sticks for control and the heli moving slowly in the air during initiation, the gyro got out of initialization wacked. Andy hits the throttle hold, but there's no way to stabilize it on the way down as he doesn’t practice autorotation approaches with the tail spinning.
Damage: not too bad, although I haven't had the time to take it apart and inspect it closely. With the boom slightly cracked, I temporarily put it back into the boom holder, removed the blade stubs, bent back the flybar into a reasonably straight line- my wife didn’t even notice it was crashed when she saw it.
I was gathering parts for a second expert kit to turn into an extreme, so I have all parts and have to order minimal replacements for the extreme kit (flybar, skids). Obvious damage:
1) 9253 tail servo. These always seem to break gears. Maybe I should put a servo saver on it. :-) tail pushrods and crank survived
2) flybar. I'll have to order a new one for the extreme kit since I only have one.
3) Tailboom. I'll use the spare from the expert kit. Interestingly, the torque tube and tail supports survived
4) cracked front strut. I bought two sets on my last crash- I have a spare
5) maybe the skid. I can bend it back, if not, I'll have to take it from the extreme kit
6) Tail slider lever. I'm going to replace the tail section with a metal upgrade (two came in yesterday).
7) Blades. Back to those ol’ Mavs I have laying around.
Not so obvious damage: (guessing here)
1) main shaft, spindle. Again, I'll use the second kit's expert shafts since I bought an extreme shaft and spindle upgrade
2) Bearings. Again, I have spares due to the extreme kit upgrade (double upper bearing, third bearing block, extremem style one piece bearings block)
3) power swtich\battery pack- I'll be looking at these closely. |
