Re: Worst CL evening ever.

andrew Wed Apr 03, 2013 9:52 am

Well, at least you got to the field.

I had a 5 foot or so wing fully framed up ready for ailerons --- I set it off to the side of the workbench so I could solder up some control horns. I managed to knock a 1 lb. roll of solder off the bench and ended up with a partially framed up wing waiting for repairs.

I was headed to the field with another 5' wing in hand when I lost control of the storm door. Ended up going back in with a 4' section and a 1' section.

Last summer, I was again headed to the field with a decent sized plane in the truck (with topper). The nosewheel was corralled in a coil of heavy jumper cables until a young lady (using the term loosely) with her nose in her cell phone started to pull out of a side road. I hit the brakes, chirped the wheels and was rewarded with a heavy thump from the back. When I got a chance to pull over to check, I found a broken rudder, broken elevator, crushed stab tip and ribs and broken stab LE. Those are the times we tell ourselves it could have been worse --- I was OK, she was OK and the vehicles were OK, but I was still a tad ticked.

In my significantly younger years, I built my first large CL plane, a Buster with a McCoy Redhead .19 --- all previous had been 1/2A sized. Cranked it up and my father launched it for me since I was flying in one of our fields. The in-board wing dropped and the plane started up into a wingover. When it hit the end of the lines almost directly over me, it jerked the handle out of my hand and started down the other side. Flash to crash in about 5 seconds. I had forgotten to add any outside wing weight and didn't have enough experience to save the plane initially.

**Cribbs74** Wed Apr 03, 2013 5:55 pm

Kim wrote:Well, count me in too! Second outing with my new/old Ringmaster, and having a Big Time. One more flight before wrapping up on a chilly, but calm afternoon, and had the engine croak right at the worst time....coming toward the top of an outside loop that was supposed to turn into a wingover. The plane rolled in as I ran backwards. I was even being a good boy and flying over half concrete / half grass, but the Ring chose the concrete!

The engine/nose area took the brunt, saving the wing except for shock-tears in the silkspan. So, already got the wing patched, and will rebuild the nose later today.

Thumbing my nose at the Gods of Crash, I got home in time to do some frontyard laps with my old Combat Kitten, with it's "sorta Golden Bee" actually behaving...maybe for fear of my general tone...

Slap-the-Dragon Kim

Kim,

Tough break! Not nice to hear. Hopefully it's all easily repairable. I wondered how those full fuse ones fared in a crash, guess they do pretty good.

The exact same thing happene to me yesterday, good thing was I was really high up and was able to correct and land it. I hate those surprise shut downs.

Keep us informed!

Ron

Kim Wed Apr 03, 2013 6:09 pm

Thanks...will do. Yeah, as bad as I hate smacking one of these things, I REALLY get ticked when I bust something in the shop or in transit !!!

The Ringmaster will rise again, and even if it smacks again, will be rebuilt if there's enough there to mess with. The eight or 9 nine good flights I DID manage to log have set the hook deep. I always thought that I remembered that magic, but it was nothing like handling the REAL dog when it's hauling on it's cables !!!

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