The big crash

While flying last Saturday I had the TM in the air for the first time with a realistic weight, well balanced, a good power plant, and a calm day. The plane was flying well. I'd tried a couple of victory rolls, a few loops and some inverted flying all of which went just fine.

When I had the plane about 50 metres from me I rolled her onto her back for some more inverted flying. She immediatelly began losing altitude. No problem - to be expected, pushed the stick forward and gave her full throttle to hold her up. She continued to lose altitude and put her nose down (so about 10 metres above the ground, upside down with her nose tending towards earth).

No doubt the dreaded radio interference had cut the engine (I was too far away to hear the engine noise), and I didn't realise quickly enough to close the throttle for the necessary 1 second and reopen.

End result, she nosed in for a hard hard crash. Cowling smashed, gearbox smashed, both wings snapped and the upper section of the forward fuselage ripped away from the lower section. A dent was made in the almost brand new 11.1v LiPo pack (worth almost as much as the plane).

I have never had this sort of issue with the Electrafun. Best I can figure, the electrafun 4 channel receivers are dodgy, and can only really do 3 channels well. Anyway, I'm sworn off them for any model which is not somewhat crash proof.

After picking up every piece I could find I glued the TM back together as best I could. It went back together better than expected, and in the end only one small piece of the fuselage couldn't be found. I'm planning to fill that hole with Selley's Spakfilla.

The LiPo pack seems to be okay. It took a charge, is showing no sign of swelling, and there is no indication that the pack has been ruptured. Will keep a close eye on it of course. All the servos, the speedie and receiver seem okay (such as that f*#&$*# receiver could ever be called okay). I might recycle them into a flying wing that I've been looking at down at Nitrodude. The wing is EPP so breaking it is tough, and even if you break it, you just glue the single piece back together, and of course only needs three channels (airlerons, elevator and throttle). Elevator is an elevon mixing setup. This had me concerned - the Electrafun transmitter can't do elevon mixing (where pulling back on the stick actually makes the two airlerons work like an elevator together - each airleron needs to be served by its own servo). However, there is a neato Himark elevon mixing component. You plug it into the elevator and airleron channels on your receiver, and then your two airleron servos into the back of it and hey presto, elevon mixing without an expensive transmitter.