Motor failure Fliteline P-38. Happened to anyone else?

[CFIT rob]

Lost my P-38 today. Flying it since mid july. Two minutes into what was about my 12th flight , I was pulling up from a low pass and heard a screech. Plane went into a left flat spin. I chopped throttle but didnt have enough altitude to recover and she pancaked flat into the ground . Post crash inspection, port motor spins freely. Hooked up batteries, port motor armed but would not spin . It moved slightly back and forth so i gave it a spin and it started turning but would not sustain itself and made a clicking sound. Props are intact and undamaged other than scrapes from a near vertical decent. Has anything like this happened to anyone else. Love the aircraft but a little gunshy on replacing it.

[xviper]

Not a complete failure and it's not my P-38 (mine is still flying perfectly on stock power). This is a flying buddy at one of my fields. He's only had a couple of flights and they were somewhat "unbalanced". It seems the motors were not putting out the same power. He doubled checked everything (with help from me) and one was putting out significantly more watts than the other. At lower speeds, the plane would pull badly to one side. He even had a mishap with it on the second flight because of it. He's been dealing with Motion to get it resolved and hasn't flown the plane since. After repairing all the damage, he's a little reluctant to send it up again. It's a shame. This is not a cheap plane for us in Canuck-ville.

[CFIT rob]

Discovered reason for failure. Had two motor leads with bad solder joints. Shrink tube was all that was holding wires into bullet connectors. Looks like wires were pushed into cold solder leaving a pocket. Contacted motion but was denied any assistance. (30 days out of warranty.) Also stated its our responsibility as pilots to check these connections. Guess we should start dissasembling planes every flight to check for defective parts. Xviper2,Might have your buddy cut away shrink tube and inspect bullet con.

[BadBob]

[QUOTE=CFIT rob;n48800]Discovered reason for failure. Had two motor leads with bad solder joints. Shrink tube was all that was holding wires into bullet connectors. Looks like wires were pushed into cold solder leaving a pocket. Contacted motion but was denied any assistance. (30 days out of warranty.) Also stated its our responsibility as pilots to check these connections. Guess we should start dissasembling planes every flight to check for defective parts. Xviper2,Might have your buddy cut away shrink tube and inspect bullet con. [/QUOTE

Makes me want to consider pulling these
Chinese motors and ESC's and replacing them with American reliability!

[xviper]

Makes me want to consider pulling these
Chinese motors and ESC's and replacing them with American reliability!

I would be very curious as to what motors and ESC's you might find that are made in the USA and not empty your wallet. Even the almighty Eflite products are all made in China.
I think there may be an over-reaction here as the vast majority of P-38's out there have been working extremely well and all but a rare few have encountered issues. Personally, I'm not prepared to pay 3 to 4 times the price to get perfection. The standard of quality as it presently stands from companies like Freewing is more than adequate and acceptable to me.

[BadBob]

Yeh, I suppose your right. Pretty much anything electronic is made in China nowadays. To replace them, I'd have to remove them anyway, so might as well inspect them and fix whatever I find wrong, if anything, myself.

[CFIT rob]

I have 4 other Freewing aircraft(a10,Panther,f35,yak 130)with many,many trouble free flights. I do not think freewing/flightline has an issue with their motors/esc. I think i have a rare poorly manufactured part. I am slightly disappointed in Motion rc's legendary customer support for an obvious defective part(you can zoom in on the picture and see how little of the lead was in the bullet and the cold solder pocket it formed). Thirty days out of warranty non negotiable. Just business. Keep that in mind if you cant build it soon after you receive it. Motion still #1 in the rc air market. I now know to do a more thorough check of motor wiring during future builds. (like my mig 21 next week..boo ya!) Ps.. I think the screech i heard was the motor out of phase as one lead finally pulled out of bullet.

[Chalredline1]

First. Sorry about your plane, but yes this happened to me although I didn't lose the plane. Mine was pulling hard right on the take off roll. It was doing it intermittently so I thought it was gear related and even changed out the gear. Then today first flight no problem. Second flight went to take off and wham hard right.
Broke a blade. Changed it out and then tried it again and it took off fine. Then during flight and the first time it's done the plane acted strangely. I was able to land ok. Then on the ground I started working the throttle and the starboard motor was cutting out very briefly intermittently. I also heard
the same screech. So, I'll check the connections and if all is good there will probably try the ESC

[xviper]

I fly off rough grass field and today after landing, I could see one retract crooked as I drove back in. These struts are hard to keep locked up tight. It's where the screws are in the retract trunion that can't hold the strut solid. I've got the RC Castle struts but the stock ones did this as well. Someone who has owned other brands of P-38s picked mine up this morning and was shocked to see how heavy this plane is.
Oh, sorry, to be on topic, motors ran fine. In fact, I was talking about going upgrade power and my flying buddy said, "Man, that thing is fast", as it came around for a low pass. I think I'll leave it alone for now.

[Chalredline1]

I was just glad I didn't damage the new RC Castle gear or do any major damage. I've flown off our grass field as well and I've had them twist in the trunion which I thought was the cause of my erratic takeoff issue, but apparently that isn't the case. I'm going to dig into the plane today and see if there are any loose connections/bad solder. I've gone ahead and ordered an ESC as a precaution though.