Well, things could have gone better today. I took the Apache to the Texas Scale Championships today. First flight went awesome, the chopper performed perfectly and I completed all of the maneuvers without too much difficulty. The second flight however, did not go well. I was climbing into a wingover turn, and heard the dreading shredding noise again. Power dropped almost immediately, unlike last time where I was level and at altitude, I was pointing downwind, with the nose aimed at the sky at about 50 ft. I was able to get the bird level, but couldn’t recover enough RPM for a successful autorotation. Keep in mind this is a 7.5 lb heli 500 size bird, so she drops like a brick without power. It hit level, and in the tall grass about a foot off of the side of the runway.
Damage was admittedly nearly not as bad as it could have been. Since pretty much all the rotor energy had been expended, the head and blades are undamaged. The worst is a few large rips in the fiberglass, and a broken gear strut. Otherwise, it was just the glued on detail pieces that came off. It will fly again, but the main gear really concerns me. There was no clear point of failure like last time. Pinion was still aligned properly, one way was tight, and it performed the exact same maneuver before without issue. I’m starting to think that looking into a custom CNC gear might be a better way to go. Or, just sticking to level flight and low torque maneuvers.