Our crazy retrieval story. What's yours?

[Flite Brothers]

So this weekend I (Steve) took my dad out to fly his Storch. He is still learning so I buddy box him as usual and we prepare the plane to fly. Before take off, I run the usual control surface check and everything appears to be functioning properly, so I give him control and he proceeds to throttle up and take off. It climbed steady about 10 feet off the ground and then began a hard right turn. He gave it more throttle and tried to level it out but the controls were not responding well. It climbed higher, all the while spinning/banking erratically and drifting over our heads towards the tree line. I should have taken over sooner and just cut the throttle but before I knew it the plane was above the trees and still acting erratic. I finally took over but the plane was in a spin and not responding to input. In a matter of second the Storch made one last loop and plowed into the top of a white birch tree where it came to rest around 50 feet in the air. :black_eyed:



We laughed....for a moment, until the question; "How the heck are we gonna get that down?" started to tease us. The plane hung there helpless while we contemplated what to do. I pushed through the brush and thicket to find the base of the tree. Perhaps I could climb it and shake the plane out? Unfortunately, I discover that there were no branches for as far as I can see up the trunk. About this time, Rich called to see how things were going. After explaining our situation he says "Send dad here with the Van." 20 minutes later they return with a 30ft extension ladder, 16 ft tree pruner and a plan. We drag the ladder through the brush and carefully raise it up against the tree. Up I go with the pruner and begin slowly taking off the branches that are blocking my sight to the plane. It becomes clear that the plane is resting on one small branch that must be cut for it to fall. Standing on the top rung of the ladder and a nearby limb, holding the very end of the pruner and reaching as high as I can, I am about 8" too short.

Look close and you can see me holding the pruner pole and the Storch at the very top of the tree. Keep in mind I am standing 25' off the ground here.


After all this, I refused to give up. I grabbed a limb above with my other hand, wrapped my legs around the tree and pulled myself up an extra foot, meanwhile guiding the 16' pruner pole up with the other hand, just barely hooking it over the branch. I give the string a good pull and *snap, crunch, crack* the branch and plane come floating down, landing gently in the canopy of a smaller tree just 10' off the ground. :applause: I climb halfway down the ladder, free the plane from the branches and drop it safely to Rich and our dad below. Mission accomplished!

I haven't seen a thread like this started before so forgive me if I missed it but retrieval is part of the hobby and makes for some great stories. I'd be interested to hear some of your more interesting/crazy stories so post away!

 

[Raptortech]

I landed a plane about 65 feet up a tree.

Tried throwing rocks and such. No luck.

Brought out the potato cannon. No luck.

Broke out the climbing gear. Rope was too short. No luck.

Met some random guy walking by. He had a cherry picker. Luck.

 

[wire10ga]

I tie a weight on a string and toss it over the limb. Then grab both ends and shake my planes out. Seems to work so far and only lost one of my wrench sockets (weight) to the trees so far.

 

[RAM]

It was hunting season many years ago. My sister in law decided she wanted to try deer hunting so my brother and I took her out. She twisted her ankle about a mile in. We "retrieved" her by slinging all three rifles on her shoulders while we made a sort of chair with our arms interlocked. No deer were hurt that day and we all had a laughing good time stumbling out of the woods ready to collapse a few hours later. Or is this only about planes?

 

[Snarls]

Met some random guy walking by. He had a cherry picker. Luck.

Haha what a nice guy.

So far 'knocks on wood' I've only landed about 30' up in a tree in my backyard. Well I've done it multiple times, but luckily I have a snow rake that is just long enough to poke the plane out of the tree. If it was higher up I'd probably test out my fishing skills.

 

[Pancho]

This one is pretty cool:

 

[Pancho]

Then there is this one by FliteTest.

 

[Pancho]

And then this one...starts out practical...

 

[mrwhiskers]

I have 2 stories: My brother crashed his micro radian about 40-50ft in a big fir tree. luckily we had a man-lift on hand at the time and got it out. (afterwards my friend and i flew our bigger planes while standing at the top of the man-lift). Second, my cousin got his mini scout stuck in a tree at his house so we tried fishing rods but the line snapped. then he tried using a micro quadcopter with a skewer to poke it out(which failed.) finally i tied a roll of duct tape to baling twine and repeatedly threw it up at the plane. it took a few tries, but eventually it worked.

 

[510thousandths]

I've done my share of plane retrieving. Most have been accomplished with just a long pole pruner, but I have had to resort to other means. I've climbed trees WITH the pruner before, thrown footballs at stuck planes, put a rubber ball on an arrow and shot the arrow at the plane (surprising getting a football stuck in a tree and having to use said arrow to first dislodge the football before returning to get the stuck plane out, only to then get the arrow stuck in the same oak tree. ) last plane stuck, I needed to retrieve quickly...

https://m.youtube.com/?#/watch?v=WfpHFK32G9A

 

[mactek]

My first flight on my Radian got stuck in the top of a tree about 80 feet up. I went to Dicks and bought a slingshot, fishing line and some large nuts from home depot. Took me 4 days of trying but i finally got it out. Needless to say i am a expert with a slingshot now.

 

[wbvike]

My very first RC plane was the Parkzone Champ and a little over a year ago i was flying in a field on a slightly windy day and largley due to my inexperience with flying, the plane was all sorts of being out of trim! So as the plane was making big swooping dives and me try to gain control, I wasn't noticing that it was getting higher and higher in the air until it reached the top of the tree line and the wind got it..... At this point it has vanished over the tree line and i have no idea where it's gone. I walk over and it is parked in the top of a tree, maybe 80-100' up in front of a facility that coincidentally enough, makes airplane parts.... Long story short, it was so high up that nothing I tried was even close. It did happen to fall on it's own a few feet down the next day, but still too high. This happened on a Wednesday and it's now Friday and no luck still....I live an hour away from where the plane is perched, so i wasn't going to spend four hours of driving on my days off to check on it. Well i guess maybe i should have though, because by Monday morning it was gone! My guess is that the wind finally knocked it out of the tree and someone snagged it as where this place is located it's next to soccer fields that were very busy that weekend. Either way i was a bit disappointed, but at the same time since it was now gone it helped force me into finally building my own planes with foam board.

 

[wlouisharris2000]

These stories are always great. The field near me is full of them. The best story I have is with my Sport Cub S. I had just finished replacing the motor, pushrods, and tailset. I went out to a field behind a school near me. A wind gust hit and pushed me into a tailspin that I could not recover from. The plane ended up in a tree about 80 ft high. I went to Walmart and bought a slingshot, fishing weights, and 100 lb test line. I couldn't shoot it higher than 40 ft. I waited a day and a big storm hit with 25-30mph winds. I went after work and saw the plane was no longer in the tree. The woods is real deep so I hiked around. I found the plane on the other side of a fence with barbed wire. Then off the the big box shop to get some wire cutters. Hopped the fence and the plane was back in my hands. The plane had dried out but I ran a hair dryer over it for about 15 minutes. Plugged a battery in and the plane still powered on and flew.

 

[FAI-F1D]

As someone who primarily flies free flight, retrieval is a never ending fact of life. I remember being 15 and Mom driving me to the field to retrieve a model 40' up a tree using various poles duct taped together next to a busy road...not fun. Sent a couple sailing down the Chattahoochee river during contests...didn't manage to retrieve those. I bought an 11 meter put over fishing pole earlier this year, and that has made life easier in many ways.

The last truly marathon retrieval I had involved a small rubber powered scale job that hit a thermal and drifted about a half mile off the field, over water, and landed on a dike within 50' of Lake Hartwell after 7+ minutes of gliding around. Quite a miracle flight! Then there was a glider I was flying, and it hit a thermal and got high enough that I lost sight of it. Apparently the wind shifted and it landed on a nearby hill, where it was found by the farm staff, which contacted me to return it. This spring our R/C club had a "chicken" contest in which your score was how many seconds you could leave your transmitter on the table without touching it while your airplane flew around. I got second place, but my model got caught in the inflow of a thermal so strong that it was actually tracking backwards. After we lost visual, I attempted to track the model down, but couldn't find it. Turns out it had gone MUCH further downwind than I had thought, over a pecan orchard, a field, and a stand of pine trees into an open field (about a mile from the launch site), where it was found by a farmer a week later. After another week, the model finally made it back to me as it was passed off from person to person. The tail had broken off and warped, but an hour's worth of repairs had it flying great once more, and it's still one of my favorites.

My favorite retrieval story is the one of the free flight gas powered model that was lost in the 60's and recovered by folks who knew nothing about model airplanes. Once the internet came along, their son tracked down the owner through the AMA number on the wing, and returned the model to its rightful owner 40 years after he had lost it! The model was still in flyable condition, too, other than needing the engine cleaned and lubricated.

 

[paulshort]

I lost a plane about 40 meters up a tree and there was no hope of climbing it. So we went and borrowed a huge rope and tied it as far up the tree as we could climb and tied the other end to our car. We pulled so hard that the back wheels of the car came off the ground. We spent hours shaking the tree and didn't get it down. About 3 months later it blew down. The problem was that all the electronics where still up the tree. I have a photo somewhere I think.

 

[iCrash]

My story involves two planes. One which was lost 6 weeks before the other. So... My buddy who was learning to fly lost his Champ because it was too windy. It blew off course... way off course. So far off course it was probably a good 50' in the air when it left the field and went into the deep brush/trees and kept going out of site. He looked for it for quite a while and just gave up.

Fast forward 6 weeks. I had just finished building a 36" wing for my buddy to fly. I threw it up for the first time so I could trim it out. It was way way out of trim. It didn't help that I was not feeling well with a terrible headache. I shouldn't have been flying, I guess, but I really wanted my friend to fly. So up it went. As I was trimming it, I lost control and down it went. You can probably guess by now that it didn't go down in the RC field. It took us 2 1/2 hours of searching. The only way I found it in the deep brush, thick mosquitoes, and thorny trees was by moving the servos back and forth and listening for them. I finally heard them and homed in on the sound. His wing was stuck up a tree about 5' up. My buddies Champ was literally directly beneath it! If the wing fell out of the tree, it would have hit the Champ. I took the Champ home, cleaned it up, and put a fresh battery in it. It still worked, though a bit bleached from the sun and rain over the past 6 weeks.