Official FlightLine RC 1600mm Spitfire Mk. IX Thread

[RRHandy]

Aros, sorry to see and read that. R

[downwindleg]

Today was not a good day.

I took the Spitfire up to the school and it was a perfect day for flying. Put my newer Admiral 6S 5000 in, did my usual pre-flight check, everything looked great. Took off uneventfully and flew my usual pattern and scale maneuvers with ease as usual.

Then suddenly it lost all power, she torque-rolled starboard side and smashed into the roof of the school. I had the plane flying over the parking lot and suddenly the wing dipped starboard and my immediate thought was "Wow that's a healthy gust of wind!" but when I saw that none of my inputs were responding I knew it was toast and all I could do was pray it wouldn't cause any real damage to the property. Turns out the principal was there. I didn't think anyone was there at the time. I noticed a door was open so I called out for someone and two ladies popped out of a room and I explained what had happened. My concern had nothing to do with my plane, but the fact that there was a LiPo battery up there and I didn't know what condition it was in. Thoughts of a fire swirled through my mind.

They brought me down to the principal's office - first time I can say that in 35 years - and I met with him, explained what had happened and my concern.

The good news, besides the fact that nobody was hurt nor any real damage to anything occurred, is that the roof is metal. Even IF the battery exploded it wouldn't do any real harm. He said the maintenance people wouldn't be able to retrieve it until tomorrow. However, I was concerned due to the high heat, sitting exposed to the metal roof but I was assured by a friend with decent knowledge of LiPo's that it is unlikely to catch fire if it didn't at the point of impact. I returned later in the day with binoculars to look at the battery and it was all alone with nothing around it to catch fire if worst-case-scenerio took place. And the principal was leaving when I was there the second time, so we spoke again and he said he actually had one of his maintenance guys show up and he assessed it and felt it was okay to leave until tomorrow AM.

The entire front of the plane was ripped off at impact. Motor, spinner, firewall, everything. The LiPo was ejected about 6 feet in front of the resting spot of the model. It's a total loss.

For the record myself and other folks have flown at this school for over a decade. This is the first time a model has hit the actual school and I feel terrible about it. I wasn't flying over the school when it occurred, but the roll spun it over to the roof where it hit. I have no idea what caused the sudden loss of power. Until I retrieve the model (and even then, I may never know the cause), I can only speculate. My first gut instinct is a receiver brown-out that couldn't be restored in time to save it. Or loose wire connection somewhere? Everything seemed fine during my inspection at pre flight. ESC? Something else? No idea.

Just bummed all around today. :(

Wow Todd, that's awful. Glad nobody was hurt and secondly no damage to the roof but man, what a drag. Is your receiver the type with an extra satellite or just by itself? I hope for the future that you are able to figure out what the heck happened. Not exactly a confidence builder in your radio gear when something like that happens and of course it happens occasionally to all of us at one time or another.:Thinking: Brad

[CDN_Iceman]

Hey Jeff, unlike any other plane I can think of, it actually takes mixing up elevator with the flaps instead of down.........I've got mine set at 15% up if that's any help. Brad

Thanks Brad

That is what I had noticed as the sink rate was too high with my initial settings. I will hopefully get out again on Wednesday and try the up 15% setting.

Thanks once more

Jeff

[CDN_Iceman]

Today was not a good day.

I took the Spitfire up to the school and it was a perfect day for flying. Put my newer Admiral 6S 5000 in, did my usual pre-flight check, everything looked great. Took off uneventfully and flew my usual pattern and scale maneuvers with ease as usual.

Then suddenly it lost all power, she torque-rolled starboard side and smashed into the roof of the school. I had the plane flying over the parking lot and suddenly the wing dipped starboard and my immediate thought was "Wow that's a healthy gust of wind!" but when I saw that none of my inputs were responding I knew it was toast and all I could do was pray it wouldn't cause any real damage to the property. Turns out the principal was there. I didn't think anyone was there at the time. I noticed a door was open so I called out for someone and two ladies popped out of a room and I explained what had happened. My concern had nothing to do with my plane, but the fact that there was a LiPo battery up there and I didn't know what condition it was in. Thoughts of a fire swirled through my mind.

They brought me down to the principal's office - first time I can say that in 35 years - and I met with him, explained what had happened and my concern.

The good news, besides the fact that nobody was hurt nor any real damage to anything occurred, is that the roof is metal. Even IF the battery exploded it wouldn't do any real harm. He said the maintenance people wouldn't be able to retrieve it until tomorrow. However, I was concerned due to the high heat, sitting exposed to the metal roof but I was assured by a friend with decent knowledge of LiPo's that it is unlikely to catch fire if it didn't at the point of impact. I returned later in the day with binoculars to look at the battery and it was all alone with nothing around it to catch fire if worst-case-scenerio took place. And the principal was leaving when I was there the second time, so we spoke again and he said he actually had one of his maintenance guys show up and he assessed it and felt it was okay to leave until tomorrow AM.

The entire front of the plane was ripped off at impact. Motor, spinner, firewall, everything. The LiPo was ejected about 6 feet in front of the resting spot of the model. It's a total loss.

For the record myself and other folks have flown at this school for over a decade. This is the first time a model has hit the actual school and I feel terrible about it. I wasn't flying over the school when it occurred, but the roll spun it over to the roof where it hit. I have no idea what caused the sudden loss of power. Until I retrieve the model (and even then, I may never know the cause), I can only speculate. My first gut instinct is a receiver brown-out that couldn't be restored in time to save it. Or loose wire connection somewhere? Everything seemed fine during my inspection at pre flight. ESC? Something else? No idea.

Just bummed all around today. :(

That is terrible Aros.

I know the pain of losing control of a plane after all the work you put into it.

I hope you get the plane back and flying again soon.

Jeff

[TiredIronGRB]

Or loose wire connection somewhere? Everything seemed fine during my inspection at pre flight. ESC? Something else? No idea.

Just bummed all around today. :(

Sorry:Scared:I'm betting on loose connection...I'm going to start physically checking every solder connection on new planes just incase.

[Oxotnik]

Aros, really sorry to hear about the Spit. As I've moved into the larger foamies, I've become a fan of battery backups. A $30 Scorpion Backup is great for planes with a ton of servos. It has a 500mah 2S battery that'll plug directly into the receiver. It only comes online if the RX bus voltage drops below 5V. I have two of them, and move them between planes. A couple times the battery backups have been warm after the flight, meaning that they'd come on line, probably avoiding a brown-out. Anyway, I'm a believer in battery backups.

[Aros]

Thanks fellas. Hopefully I can "NTSB" it tomorrow to see if I can't come to some kind of conclusion. Oxotnik, after this, I am definitely going to be looking closer into backup/redundancies. Had I had one in this model, perhaps I could have at least brought her down safely.

[rifleman_btx]

Man that sucks. Yes close inspection of all wires is definitely the right idea. What sucks is it takes something like this to break all of us of our complacency of not giving our models a once over. Sorry to hear and see this. :(

[Aros]

It's true...Even when we are thinking we are doing our due diligence in a pre-flight check, how often are we REALLY looking everything over before taking off? I doubt most of us check motor to ESC connections each flight as example. Or if the servo leads "look" like they are still plugged into the receiver, why bother checking closer? In this hobby there are a million things that can go wrong, and that is why I am always impressed that there aren't more accidents like mine today on a regular basis.

[MesRcPilot]

I'm sorry to hear this :(... How things get complicated fast ... Murphy never sleeps ... I hope for a successful investigation ... chin up Sir!

[cruiser]

Aros, my sympathies too. Been there.

I've had my Spitfire for about three weeks now and this is my first warbird after flying helicopters and lately the Carbon Z Cub. I love this plane but it scared the bejeepers out of me learning the new feel. By the way, I'm now landing 100% on the wheels with no nose overs!!! I will relate that I too had a very close call with the Spit. Last week after I did my visual inspection, tested control surfaces and then cycled my landing gear, I headed for the runway. Just as I prepared to throttle up my landing gear folded up. That was close. So I took it back to the pits, took the wing off and physically pushed all connections together. Guess which one was half way out?

Anyway, good luck on your next bird.

[themudduck]

Aros, that's a really tough story and I'm very sorry the plane was lost. Thank goodness no one was hurt.
Its going to be difficult to figure out the cause. There are many possibilities.

Last year I had my Freewing ME262 just stop responding to aileron during a flight and it slowly rolled over and went right into a stand of trees. (It was stuck 30 feet up, I did get it out and I repaired it -LOTS of work, hours- and its flying again with all the same RC equipment.) The aileron lead wasn't plugged into the receiver when I retrieved it from the cut-down tree. So I was very suspicious.... :Thinking: On this particular plane, the receiver was tucked near the pilot's legs and wasn't really secured, so it may have been jostled around.

What I do now it install a "safety wire" on my receivers- I use a length of "twist-tie wire" and put it through all the plugs going into the receiver and tie the wire around the receiver, so that its physically impossible for the plugs to back out. Then I wrap the receiver in foam and "Pack it in" so it can't move. (to try and reduce vibration). I do this on all of my planes.

If you don't take the time to do this - consider that there's absolutely nothing to prevent those plugs from coming out except for friction.
Its good to also "safety-tie" all your servo extensions as well.

[Oxotnik]

Good words, Mudduck. I haven't been ziptying my connectors to the RX. I'm usually good about wiggling the wires after a plane has powered up. If I notice servos twitching, then it's an indicator that a connector is loose. I've found several loose connectors this way. Ziptying is a great preventive measure.

[downwindleg]

On a completely different note, I've been meaning to mention that the canopy on the Spitfire seems much clearer than other MRC plane canopies which I'm very happy about but just wondering if they changed materials. If so, good move. I've actually noticed the glint from the windscreen in flight. Brad

[barron06]

I, too, am sorry to hear this Aros. It is a bummer. The thing is, no matter what we do to try to prevent things like this, Murphy can find a way. You simply may have had some encased component short out, thus browning out the rx.

My Spits blue box prevented the gear from working. MRC my me whole but I wondered what the problem was so I disassembled the defective one. Popping the case removing the white sealant, revealed the gear lead just setting there. I don't know what they use to bond these leads but I could see no solder on it... or the working leads, which were obviously attached. It almost looked like they did a "spot weld" on these guys, if there is such a thing for solder. I was trying to build up my confidence in using these boxes for flight controls but I have taken (another) step back from them. The failure must be low on them but still... However, I do think they get wrongly blamed for lots of crashes.

[Aros]

Good advice themudduck...This will definitely force me to make adjustments for added security in the future. Thanks again fellas.

[Grossman56]

Hey Buddy, I can totally relate, My Little Gal II went in the same way, took off, retracted gear and boom, in she went, no radio response. Since then, I've went Lemon receivers with no issues so far. The Avanti and the Tigercat are running Lemons as I've heard too many things going wrong with Spektrum IMHO, and besides, I'm not impressed with all the extra gadgetry that comes with the new ones. Besides I can get a 10 channel Lemon for $30,
Not sure what system you're running, but food for thought.
Anther thing, I used to fly at our school which is just across the street with the Pandoras until I realized that the wind sliding off those metal roofs is just like a invisible waterfall. I had some hairy moments as well before I figured out what was going on. Even with no wind, the heat rising off those things would make for an interesting ride as well.

Grossman56

[Austang]

Gday all, I maidened my Spitfire yesterday finally, I had my son come and video the occasion for me, She was a little twitchy at first, until I got her trimmed, but then she flew nice, until it came time to land, It seems my brain had some kind of fart because when it came time to set her up, I put in down elevator instead of up with the flap deployment, I was convinced this was the way to go, but I was wrong, well hopefully this link works and you can see for yourselves the result.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T68Ej5jNR0A

[Dewey H Lee]

Austang that was some really great pilot skills to save a bad situation. GREAT work:Cool::)

[Grossman56]

Nice work Austang! Welcome to the Forum, and let me compliment your son on the great video work as well.
Reminds me of the first flight with the Tigercat. Had way to much mix in her, so the first landing was with no flaps. Rolled all the mix out of her on mid and full flaps and flew the second flight like that. Mids were fine, but full needed some mix, so landed with half flaps and added a bit of mix. Through trial and error, although not quite as much error as originally, I found the sweet spot for my plane.
The main goal for any maiden is to get her safely back on the ground, you accomplished that in Spades!!


Grossman56