eMeNeX
Heliman
Location: Northern Virginia
My Posts This: Topic Forum | I've been flying for nearly 6 years and I've never crashed a nitro bird. Sure I've crashed my Shogun 400 3 times and rekitted 3 times, but well the shogun never flew well once converted to belt drive.
I've always been a pretty conservative pilot with my nitros doing loops and rolls, flips and circuits and smaller autos.
Today I was getting pretty bold in my flying as I have been trying to step it up a bit and do more 3d and fly lower and do inverted circuits. I've had tons and tons of practice and my orientation is down. I had an on looker and that made me a little more bold and I had done some of my best flying. I was flying my raptor 30 and I did a half loop into a double stationary flip to inverted nose in circuit and I brought it about 12-15 feet above the ground and gave forward elevator, pulled it soaring up into the air, 360 piro and then a stationary flip. I was tail down towards terra firma pull back and applied negative pitch to do tail forward inverted flight into an inverted tail forward loop. Just my luck I lose tail authority and I can't do anything on the tail and it spins 90 degrees on me at about 15 feet up and holds in place. So quick thinking I decide to flip it back right side up now it's nose in and the tail spins out on me again this time 120 degrees while I'm applying elevator to bring it back to me and land, sadly it spun while I was giving it elevator and it went inverted again and I tried to get it higher so I can straighten it out, but something was wrong. I then went slightly knife edge towards the ground and I still had no tail control and I knew it was going to pay a visit to the ground and I hit the throttle hold and cringed. I heard a loud thud. I packed my stuff real fast, threw it in the car and drive down past the hill behind where it crashed. I get out and it's dusk and getting hard to see and the grass is like 3 feet tall. I am thinking oh hell I'm not gonna find this quickly and I don't have a flash light with me. I hear a feint engine idle and I quickly run with my sandals on through this tall grass to the sound of my idling engine (so happy it didn't stall on me, like it had on 2 prior autos) I retrieve it from the tall grass as I fear for snakes in the grass. I run out of there with my broken heli and to my surprise the damage isn't too bad.
Blades
Flybar
Paddles
Feathering Shaft
Main Shaft
Front land struts
After thorough investigation it appears the belt stretched or something during flight because the belt is a bit loose. Enjoy the pics.
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