Brunobl
Key Veteran
Location: Pomerode, SC, Brazil - 26 40S 49 11W
My Posts This: Topic Forum | Finally my Spectra is seeing some action again. After almost a year of 100% dedication to the rebuild of my house, I have now been able to start flying again. Just starting to find time, now and then, to have some fun between work and many, many things still left to do in the house.
Not only the Spectra is getting some air time, but so is T-Rex.
The house has a kind of large yard, plenty of space to fly, so I no longer need to drive to other towns in search of flying fields. I can now fly (yes, even the Spectra!) at home. How cool is that?
In order to get some added clearance from the tail rotor to the grass, I thought it was a good idea to get Minair's "tuf-strut", with which the Spectra stands a bit taller. The struts themselves are not only larger, but do seem stronger. The aluminum skids are also considerably longer, and larger diameter.
But... After only 10 flights with the new struts/skids, the front part of the left skid broke off in mid-air.
My heart skipped a beat as I saw a shinny thing dropping off the heli (thougt it was a rotor blade), then in the next few seconds of confusion I realized the helicopter was still under control. It took a while to realize that it was part of the skid that had fallen.
The image below is a front view of the failed skid. Maybe some of you with metallurgically-trained eyes can identify what happened. The skids had never crashed or otherwise landed hard (had only 10 flights). I do recall it was a pretty tight fit in the strut, maybe it was being stressed a lot. Maybe the long skid ahead of the strut was allowed to resonate to failure. The Spectra runs smoothly, everything is still original after 115 flights, except for the struts/skids, of course, and a new rudder servo installed a few months ago.
What an odd flight.
...Bruno.
Spectra G sipping Avgas 100LL, Jewel generator
T-Rex450SE V2
DX7 |
although all I can see is the photo looks like the two dark spots( could be shadows) were cracked some time earlier and fatigue continued until it broke.
