Ikaros
Heliman
Location: Brooklyn, NY
My Posts This: Topic Forum | So this is my first post after my catastrophe last weekend (or would have been had I not decided that this should be part 2 since it was soo long). I had to take time some time off as I was so upset and distraught, that any thoughts or postings here or on any newsgroup would have probably been very aggressive and unconstructive.
So I was out flying my 600 with its new novarossi 57 - I think it was the 10th flight. I was loving it - though was having some issues tuning out some vibrations in the tail - I think I had finally solved everything...
About 2 minutes into the flight, I noticed a weird drop in headspead. Me, not being comfortable with weird things happening inflight, I immediately hit throttle hold, and attempted to land - it was then that the craziness ensued. The heli went into full-throttle mode, and soon I realized, I had absolutely no control over the throttle what-so-ever. My first thought was that I must have thrown a governor magnet (hey I was in shock and not thinking clearly) - but soon realized, that most likely I had lost my throttle linkage and my engine was stuck at FULL THROTTLE - and I still had about 3/4 of a tank left.
What a helpless feeling. It was obvious that the headspeed was much higher than what the 600 was designed for. After about 5 minutes of me trying to keep the load under control with the heli in front of me, things started to get scary - so I landed (still at full throttle) and tried to just keep it on the ground (note that at this point both of my tail boom braces had broken and things were getting really shakey everywhere) - and the engine was noticeably smoking, but still going strong.
Finally it ran out of fuel - the blades stopped - and with the engine head smoking like crazy, I ran up to pinch the fuel line (again, I am in shock and not quite thinking straight) - and try to figure out what happened.
All of this caused by the throttle lever nut coming off in mid-flight. I haven't been paying much attention to this thread to see if this is a common occurrence, but I do remember at least one post a while back where someone was trying to track down one of these nuts.
Please see previous post for my list of questions. I have to say, this is the most distraught I have been in my 2 years into this hobby. It scared the living daylights out of me, and I just sat there and witnessed a brand new $300 engine seemingly self-destruct - it is to-be-determined if it survived or not... |
My N57 is sitting here awaiting a new Liner, Piston and ring as they are damaged.