brettp2004
New member
I haven't been flying as much as I'd like to lately, but I got out the other day to burn a few batteries. I flew my Cessna around for a few minutes and decided I wanted to fly my Fun Jet that I love oh so much. I bought it from a buddy not that long ago and it has quickly become one of my favorite planes. I've ran a lot of batteries through it and am very comfortable flying my favorite pattern; low pass, straight up, a bunch of rolls and repeat. Well, yesterday I took it out and it didn't end so well. The launch was nice and smooth and I put it into a bank to turn around and decided to do a quick roll. So I did a quick roll to the right and then let go of the stick to level out. The plane rolled again, and again, and again. I tried giving it opposite elevon to level out but it just kept spinning out of control. The inevitable finally happened and it smashed upside down onto the hard dirt field I was flying in. With a big puff of dirt and scrapes of foam flying everywhere I couldn't help but laugh as it looked like a plane getting shot down in a movie. I set my tx down and took the long walk of shame to retrieve the parts thinking it was ironic that I just listened to the "How to repair your plane" podcast a couple of days ago. When I got over to the crash site there were parts everywhere and the plane was pretty beat up. When I first got into the hobby I probably would have just thrown it away, however thanks to Flitetest I'm certain it will be back up in the air as soon as I find a few hours to spend repairing it. Also thanks to Flitetest, I remembered to search the area before I started picking up pieces to find any small electronics that were ejected, which saved my LiPo alarm. I’m not sure what the cause of the malfunction was, however I think I have it narrowed down to two things. My first guess is the RX, I’ve had to re-solder the antenna and I think it might have shorted out. My second guess is the “lost plane finder” that I have connected into one of my elevon channels. I just put it on there after buying it at FliteFest in case the plane goes down into the woods and it sometimes glitches. For some reason, crashes make me even more excited about this hobby so I just thought I'd share in case anyone needs some encouragement to rebuild and get back in the air! I'll try to post some pictures so everyone can see the damage.
