Long-term Memory

Place: Halle

Raptor
Tanks flown: 1
Time flown: 0h18 (cumulative model timer: 32h07)
Rx battery recharged with: 428+197 mAh
Tx battery recharged with: 548 mAh
Glow heater battery recharged with: 1246 mAh
Starter battery recharged with: 450-ish mAh (forgot to note down)

miniTitan
Flights: 0.5
Time flown: 0h06 (cumulative model timer: 3h23)
Heli battery recharged with: (2) balanced 2181 mAh;
Tx battery recharged with: see above

Comments:
Went flying after dinner, the wind had calmed down and the rain had stopped.

I had some trouble starting my Raptor (glow heater indicated only 1A instead of the usual 5A). Since it’s been a while since I charged it, the battery was dead. A few minutes at the charger solved the problem.

In the mean time, I took my miniTitan out. Did some flying back and forth and a few stall turns to regain confidence. Next I did some back-flips. This is where it went wrong. On my 3rd back-flip, I intended to keep the heli inverted for a second and continue the back-flip, but the ground intervened…

I’m not sure what exactly happened, but it’s probably something like this: I stopped halfway through the backflip, as planned. I noted that the miniTitan did not maintain its height and was descending. I pushed in some more negative pitch, but it kept descending. [After-note: I probably didn’t give full negative]. I aborted the maneuver by continuing the backflip but pushed in positive collective too early, losing another 5m or so… Result of my first crash ever:

I verified my battery at home by discharging it at 50W (roughly 5A, the max of my charger). It had 1000+mAh still in it, so that was not the problem.

The damage report:

• Blades: Obviously, completely shattered
• Flybar and flybar paddles: The flybar is completely bent and broken at the paddles
• Swashplate: The bottom ring of the bearing came loose
• mixing lever, ball and ball link: broken off
• Main shaft: bent; This is a solid 5mm diameter hardened steel shaft… you can imagine the forces at work here!
• base plate and skids: broke off during impact
• canopy: broken, but might be repairable
• battery holder: missing
• tail boom: hit by a blade; not too bad though.

And possibly some other things that I haven’t noticed yet… To be continued…

I forced myself to take the Raptor out after this crash, but took a step back into my comfort zone; just some basic flying around, no back-flips. I also took the opportunity to fine-tune my gyro on this windless day. It needed a few ticks to the right.