Built and Promptly Crashed my first plane, Mini Arrow

[bazsound]

I know this is old but thought id add in. I actually had similar experience with the mini arrow ive now built a 3rd and 2 spares. Although im not a new flyer im stil inexperienced I come from helis and have flew trainer fixed wing before. Stillmanaged to break 2 mini arrows very quickly.

Fu nily enough mines did exactly what yours did, suddenly took a nose dive to thje ground and broke the same way even on soft grass, tjheres a week point in the wing that breakns in nose crashes.

Anyway i think its pretty much down to CG. I had nothing but trouble getting mine to fly until i made sure it was bang on the 1.75 mark, and then it flew fairly well. i got mayb e 6 or 7 flights out of myu wing then it suddenly did it (think the battery might jhave sjhifted)> So i build a 2nd. it did the same thing in its maiden flight but i was sure the CG was ok however it did not fly like it was.

anyway i build a 3rd, (and 4th and 5th as spares) double made sure it was balanced and hey presto it flew no hasles witjh just a few clicks of down elevator and landed with ease 6 minutes later.

Coming from helis i found it really odd to fly without rudder, i have a profile 3d foamie i built and i used rudder automatically to keep the plane level during the turn. takes a while to get used to, dont try to get too low as things get bad really quick.

 

[rfd]

for the average joe, without a personal mentor with you at the field and trainer box hooked up, any chances of not crashing are 1 in 100.

this is why a flight sim is *SO* important to a newbie - learning flight orientation and getting in *LOTS* of stick time.

once you can comfortably fly horizontal low altitude figure 8's and land yer sim, all done in a 5mph wind at the least, it's time to fully pre-flight check yer plane, then fly for real. that's about the minimum and anything less will far more than likely not be a good thing.