Daniel Kezar
Ultimate Cheap Skate
FomieDM came up with the idea. basically a place to share crashes just for fun or for people to learn from. also a good way to find weaknesses in certain designs if they tend to break in one place a lot.
I found the Simple Scout to be quite resilient, but weak in the nose. It took repair after repair, until the region around the power pod was pretty much all made of hot glue. The rest of it is a pretty durable design.
Simple Scout ailerons are VERY responsive, even with expo. Lots of surface area. It can get you flipped over quick.
The FT Spitfire fuselage is particularly weak at the wings, especially if you try to do the removable wing. Skip immediately to gluing if you want it to last. I was way out of my league when I built/flew this plane, and it didn't last long at all. CofG... I wasn't as educated for this plane, and exactly how important it is.
The mini scout is a pretty strong plane, and took a couple of punches to the nose with very little damage.
Learnings from crashes:
- More altitude helps when you need to recover. But then it is farther away, and tougher to see.
- I had safer flights when I avoided compound movements, and instead separated them up into more "series" components. Example: bank the plane first with the ailerons, and then bump the elevator to horse the plane around a turn.
- Don't fly your plane such that it flies between you and the sun. You might get the top and bottom confused, and then you correct in the opposite direction. End result is violent de-winging of a plane you spent several hours painting and decorating.
- Sometimes cutting the throttle and letting it come down harder than desired is better than flying into the side of a house. This describes my Eflite P-47 maiden flight.
One thing immediately came to mind, this is the WORST I have ever felt about a plane. For Christmas I built my dad an ft Old speedster and he thrilled about it. He told me that I should give it a paint job and I learned a hard lesson about what spray paint will do to foam in large amount (destroy it). I ruined the plane and it really sucked but I learned a lesson about spray paint.
My very first design - Caudron C460 race plane - a full size build at 44" wingspan with all the pretty covering and looking sharp. On the maiden flight of what would later become known as "Prototype 3" it was a little squirrely on launch, but I got it under control and made about 5 or 6 good circuits around the field doing some trimming. Feeling pretty good and decided to land her to make some changes on the control throws.
Keep in mind this is a low wing racer with a fairly small wing and a thin airfoil designed for high speed.
So I slow down and make the base leg turn for the landing approach. Mistake 1 - it just happens there is a cross wind that puts the base leg into a tail wind. Mistake 2 (the fatal one) - like a ^%@!%# noob, I made the turn bank and yank style with the right stick, pitching over with the ailerons and pulling back on the elevator.
So with the combination of these elements, what do you think is going to happen?
- Small wing to body ratio
- Thin airfoil racing wing
- Slow speed
- Low altitude preparing for landing
- Turns into a tail wind
- Rolling over into a 30 degree or so bank
You guessed it! What happened is it dropped altitude with all the glide ratio of a ring full of keys. And without enough control surface authority on the ailerons to roll it back level because it was falling sideways in what some people like to call a "tip stall" but is really just "stupid pilot banked over without enough airspeed to keep lifting forces more than gravity".
Luckily, there was a nice 25' tall maple tree right under the plane to break it's fall. So about half an hour later I got the pieces out of the tree, and it wasn't nearly as pretty anymore. :black_eyed:
And that's when I knew I needed to make Prototype 4 (which I crashed at Flite Fest after the air races, but that's a different story) and learn how to love the rudder.
My third build was 3dLabPrint's P-51. Spent 50 hours printing it, an afternoon putting it all together, take it to the field and launch it. Flies straight up 30-40 ft, hammer-heads, and loses control. Smashes into pavement turning the craft to shards of plastic. Crushes the windings on the motor, breaks the ESC and battery.
On the maiden, make sure you aren't tail-heavy.
Wasn't as much of a crash per say. Opened the rear hatch on our Dodge only to find that a box of books had fallen over on my Tundra. She had three flights. Destroyed the horizontal tail section.
Lesson learned? Don't let my wife drive with planes in the back of the car. The Tundra is now back in the air and flies great. I never ever let my wife transport my aircraft anymore.
sounds like you have had a lot of rough experiences with unfortunate events! thank you for the advice though. i am building the simple scout so the aileron tip is very helpful. i also need to learn to fly higher. when i maidened my ft flyer i just flew less than 50 feet off the ground at all times. usually less than 15 or 20 feet.
Definitely use expo on the ailerons, and reduce the rate of the aileron servos either in the TX or by moving the pushrod to the innermost hole, or both. It flies pretty decent in 3 channel without touching the ailerons. Just make sure to get it just a touch nose heavy, too. Tail heavy just keeps pointing you up, and you will eventually stall it.
I just did my first flight with an fpv camera on board using a brand new scout build. It made a great steady slow platform. When heading into the wind, it practically hovered.
I have a mini scout that I have used for FPV, it is a ton of fun, I'd definitely fly it LOS first but yeah FPV is awesome!
- Don't fly your plane such that it flies between you and the sun.