Oh man..., not again

You fly RC you had better get used to the occasional (and sometimes more than occasional) dissapointment. Yep, she went in again this morning.

I'd just engaged GroundDancer in a race with his Typhoon (which alarmingly he won, although I didn't have my best battery on the job). I flew a circuit or two more - went high power to see what sort of vertical performance I still had, and got a message to land from the plane.

Now - at the start of this process I was only about 5 metres from the ground, so I didn't have much space to play with. I sent the plane away from myself, giving her WOT to try and make her climb, but this battery was spent. With the plane just 1.5 metres of the ground about 40 metres downwind from me, and me knowing I didn't have enough airspeed or power I was just about to start a deadstick downwind approach. That's when the glitch grabbed her and threw her into the ground.

She had been glitching about a bit in the air a bit, but of course losing a metre of two of altitude - no problems providing you have 2+ metres of altitude to play with. The question might be in your mind reader so let me put this out there - she didn't stall, she had enough airspeed. In fact the damage she sustained showed that she was well above stall speed (and no the wind wasn't so strong it would account for the difference).

I was surprised at how damaged she was as it didn't seem like a big impact - she had enough speed to fly but not excessive - I guess the glitch must have really driven her into the ground. You may also recall on the last rebuild I noted that the foam is starting to seem quite brittle - maybe exposure to UV. Although she looks badly banged up she should repair okay - clean crack through the fuse, reglue the wing retainer bolt, re epoxy the firewall. However, there were two bits of damage I haven't seen before - one of the aileron torque rods has punched up through its aileron - should fix up okay with some epoxy, and one of the undercarriage wires has sheared off at the wing - from the photos it looks like the wheel was still on at that stage (and I don't remember seeing the wheel at the "crash site") so it must have dropped off at some stage afterwards - hopefully it is in the back seat of the car (I seem to remember the wing resting the way it should on the seat). Hopefully I can find that - I think this old bird is a little too fragile to start belly landing her at this stage.