The Craziest, Stupidest, Goofyest, Embarrassingest, and Greatest...Crashes, Flights, Experiments, Model Flying Machine Debacles of Your Life !

OK... When I first started flying RC about 20 years ago I built a Powered glider called a butterfly with a norvel .061. I decided to fly it without the help of someone who knew what they where doing.My Mom and Dads house was on a hill in Indiana about 3 miles from Kentucky. You could see the Ohio river and Kentucky from their house.When I was finished flying I walked in the house and my Mom said"where is your airplane" to which I replied " KENTUCKY" .Iv'e never seen her laugh so loud before or after that. Ended up being a really good memory

And I always thought that Butterfly was an answer to my prayers! Lol

ARUP wrote:And I always thought that Butterfly was an answer to my prayers! Lol

Got a good laugh at that after I remembered you where from Kentucky.lol

Modeling mishaps
Building mishaps
explosives mishaps
Car repair mishaps
Gun mishaps
Real world (not a model) aircraft mishaps
Tree stump removal mishap ( made my dad belly laugh so hard he got a hernia) really a sub set of the explosives noted above
Electrical mishaps

I have enough of each to educate a few folks on what not to do and why.....in fact as a Army instructor I used a lot or real world mishaps to make points and learning moments in my younger soldiers...a very accident prone and dangerous bunch

But for now I am waiting on Kim to see the tone of this thread as some of my stuff falls into the never ever try this realm...grin

As I recount many of these, I would like you to understand that later in life I was an Army Aircraft accident investigator with many many hours of schooling at the Army Accident Prevention Center.

Several instructors new me as they had passed through the school I taught at...when I started a course they would enlist me to tell a story and then let the class pick apart all the bad thinking, failure modes, and ways to prevent what ever I was discussing

That said, some of this can and will be real entertaining---- BUT along the way many of us will LEARN stuff....I look forward to this being a ongoing thread

Haha, gardner, good funny start for this thread which will, I expect, be one of our timeless classics that lasts the entire life of Cox Engine Forum. Thanks Kim, for giving us a place to revisit stories we may have told time and again, or stories that we may have never let out of our dark chest of shameful secrets.

I have one of the latter, which I've been sitting on, and few outside of my close circle know. I've been waiting for the right time and place to tell this story. Now it's here. I'd hoped to be the first post after Gardner's funny story, I laughed out loud, KENTUCKY. But I didn't write quickly enough.

It all started one sunny May day in the glory of my winning first place in PAMPA Beginner Stunt. After I had my picture taken with my trophy, I was told to wait, there was something else. Norfolk Aeromodeller, John Tate stepped out of the crowd with a gargantuan plane that was to be presented to me. Built by fellow Norfolk pilot, the late Mike Garmon, a plane that was resurrected by my club member Howard Shenton, was the Sig Magnum. I was flabbergasted and speechless as I dumbly accepted it in the spirit of continuing the memory of Mike and carrying it forth until(I soon decided) I could pass it on in the same spirit to another up and coming Beginner some later day.


Arriving at its new flying field



I treated it as if it was borrowed and took immaculate care of it, cleaning up details and tightening flaws from years of hard work every time I pre and post flighted it. It began to really look good, 72 ounces of badass stunt power! I flew it many times, usually early in the day when I was warmed up and hitting on all 8. I had to be careful though, because those downwind pullouts would take my skinny ass for a walk. It took all my strength to make it through a pattern, but she sure would turn some pretty corners.
https://youtu.be/05K4svmdrE0


September 2015 We had a great day of flyting. Wayne Bob Z, Rich Malik and me flew all sorts of planes. Wayne and I both put up flights on the Magnum and all was wonderful. I reeled in the lines on the Magnum and the Yak and decided to put up one more flight on the Nobler, I was flying it well. The LG came off the old ARF on its rollout, so I packed it up too. Then I complained... Damn, I felt good, I wanted to get another flight! Bob says, Hey, you looked awful good with that yellow plane. What, you mean the Magnum... Nah, the control line Gods.../// THERE ARE NO CONTROL LINE GODS, exclaimed Bob. Wayne and Bob badgered me into putting the lines back on it. I hook 'em up and roll them out, thinking, this is a bad idea, Rusty. Bad idea, are we really going to do this? We did... I did.

I never made it through the inside loops. I don't know why it hit the ground. I never saw the ground coming.


I was devastated. The worst air disaster in my control line career. I was unhappy for days, beating myself up, asking why I had ignored my own advice with such a treasured piece of history. The up and comer who would never get this plane when his time came. Only Wayne and Bob knew and I asked them to sit on it until I could tell the Norfolk gang. I did, at the October Carolina Criterium... They laughed and told me how much they loved my videos, they'd watched them at meetings and reminisced about Mike Garmon. Said he'd be proud of me, and the old plan had thousands of flights on it. Nobody ever thought it would ever fly again. But my friend Howard Shenton had thought otherwise and fixed it up for me. It hangs in my shop's Bone Yard with the Osprey and the old "DirtyBird" Ray Copeland Skyray. It did make me feel some better that the Norfolk guys weren't even fazed. But you know what, it still hurts.

Here's it's last complete flight on that day, and the best pattern it ever flew at its Fort Jackson home field.
https://youtu.be/uBlTfI8ipEg

Great story Rusty!  Sounds like you got some great friends with those Norfolk guys!

fredvon4 wrote:

But for now I am waiting on Kim to see the tone of this thread as some of my stuff falls into the never ever try this realm...grin

Hey, I figure pretty much any good story works. I WOULD like it to stay 'PG' rated in that I didn't want to have to tuck it away in The Redneck Zone.

I'm still searching for some photos for my first round of 'There I Was!'

I think the biggest Titanic Boo Boo I had was back in 2005 when I was in atlanta. We had a fun fly at the club and Us heli guys brought our choppers out for demo's. Well to make a long story short, I was flying my Rapter 50 Titan with a brand new set of stick banger curtis young blood carbon fiber main blades. One of the things we liked to do was fly around the wind sock which was in the middle of the field. Well... I had done a reverse loop and was flying around it backwards at a high speed when I some how managed to drift over, Did anyone ever tell ya that helicopters are magnetically attracted to wind socks? Yup because I managed to stick the tail boom right in the middle of the windsock and BiNg!!! insta heli knot. Heli's and wind socks just don't mix lol It tied itself into a knot and flopped around on the runway doing an accurate rendition of the Chicken Dance!! VERY embarrassing but the crowd loved it lol. I still have the sock with the flybar still stuck in it. Gained a hefty respect for carbon blades too snipped a steel pole clear in half. Well folks there is my big boo boo lol expensive boo boo too.  (Bandit)

I guess this is more a story of my brother than me, but hey, I was a participant!

Rubber power was the thing growing up.  My brothers and I would go to the drug store on the next block and buy up the sheet balsa airplanes.  Big difference between the price of landing gear and no landing gear... so usually we bought mostly without.  Late in the summer the price would drop enough that if we save a few dollars from the previous weeks we could have quite a few machines to mess with. I was in grade school, my older brothers in middle school.

Not to be disrespectful of these planes, but they SUCK.  Yet I still buy them for my kids!  They are durable and cheap, so they have a lot going for them.  They also cost seemingly 100x what they did when I was a kid!

So there were three of us, I was the youngest.  About halfway through the summer we had more parts than money, and could usually raid the airplane attic for glue and sheet balsa...  OK, maybe some glue, maybe.  There rarely was balsa that was available to take as pilfering a kit was a serious offense.  Scotch tape was with the Christmas wrap in the other attic.  We were under educated about the quality of common white school glue for bonding balsa at the time.

Now we lived in the city.  It shows up on population maps as the densest population between New York and Chicago.  Little place called Lakewood.  Our house was on one of the busiest roads in the city, a major bus route.

My oldest brother was doing some reading and devised a three motor contraption with 3 separate fuselages set at slight angles to each other.  The duration on this thing was impressive.  It would fly across 4 or 5 houses before coming down.  These were very impressive flights nearing 300 ft.  These were just the test flights too, with just a short wind on the rubber.  

We would call the stages twisted, fully knotted, then double knotted (over the first set of knotting) as the band was wound.  Most times the bands would survive best with just a few turns of double knotting on the knotted.  Fuselages and rubber bands would be suspect and often fail when fully double knotted.  

Since it was a 3 motor affair it took 4 hands to launch it, hence my participation.  Toothpicks would stop the motors when wound quite well.  All 3 motor wound equally to fully knotted we launched.  It was a GLORIOUS flight.  Good power.  Stayed low enough to not get in the power and phone lines.  Relatively straight parallel to the street.

Something happened, and the craft veered towards the street.  Generally this isn't a problem since gliding is nominal, but this contraption had GLIDE too.  

And buses doing 35mph need to use wipers to remove balsa bugs from their window.

Phil

Hoot ! If ONLY the biggest thing a bus driver had to face today was an errant gumband airplane !

the biggest and most fun and craziest thing I have ever done it run an old shot (it had no compression ) wren mac mk III on a flying rag that was soo fun.I did it in an open field with no obstacles around us that were worth any thing and when I let it go I ran it was awesome but i would not do it again

akjgardner wrote:OK... When I first started flying RC about 20 years ago I built a Powered glider called a butterfly with a norvel .061. I decided to fly it without the help of someone who knew what they where doing.My Mom and Dads house was on a hill in Indiana about 3 miles from Kentucky. You could see the Ohio river and Kentucky from their house.When I was finished flying I walked in the house and my Mom said"where is your airplane" to which I replied " KENTUCKY" .Iv'e never seen her laugh so loud before or after that. Ended up being a really good memory

hahahha

I learned to fly R/C in late 1976-77, using the Mark I Kadet owned by a great friend of mine, Kevin Robertson.  He had started flying control line with us a few years before, and had a tenacious attitude toward building that I'd come to really envy.  In the summer of '76, he built a Sig Kadet, and bought a used EK Logitrol radio to steer it....by coincidence, the very radio used in the Kadet's building instructions.  He had a new Fox R/C of some type in it, though we'd later discover the wonderful O.S. engines.

Kevin had learned to fly mostly on his own, along with help from some local flyers.  He generously offered flight lessons to give me my first taste of 'real' R/C flying (read that as my NOT having to chase my often unresponsive, escapement equipped Mini Mambo!).  This ensured that I'd eventually HAVE to build my own Kadet.

Kevin's infant son, Shannon gets some stick time on his dad's Kadet:





On one calm Saturday evening, we were flying in the often-used pasture next to Wayne's house, with Kevin expanding his skill level by practicing loops, snap rolls, and the irresistible low passes. Kevin had been doing 'Scale Loops':  Power up, gentle dive, pull up into the loop, power off coming across the top, round out and power back up for level flight or another loop.

After several loops, each getting larger in diameter, he brought the trainer down the backside with power up, and hauled back hard on the elevator.  The Kadet made it through level flight and into about 30 degrees worth of pitch-up before the wing's rubber bands exploded off their dowel pegs.

It was one of those slow-motion moments as we watched the fuselage continue it's ballistic arc, with the only words being mine as I leaned toward Kevin and said in a low voice, "You might ought to throttle back..."

The idling Fox probably helped the Kadet's fuse to strike terra firma at maybe a tenth of a mile per hour less or so, but the carnage was still pretty impressive.  The wing was totally unharmed, fluttering down and landing in the grass.  Before gathering the wreckage, Kevin plugged the servos and battery back into the receiver, and got the happy surprise that everything still worked...or at least wiggled on command.

I didn't have film for my little Kodak 110 camera and couldn't record this event, so it was lost to history.

Almost immediately, Kevin bought some sheet and square stock, and set about building a new fuselage from the kit's very complete plans.

It seemed like no time before his fleet of one aircraft was back on line.  I'd finished my training with his new plane, and he had started a couple other projects, when we decided on trying a new adventure.  A man and his wife had flown a Carl Goldberg Falcon Coast-to-Coast in 1976, so we figured that flying up to my Uncle Wayne's house from our hometown ought to be a breeze.

We managed to get us a pick-up truck chase vehicle, and a calm Saturday evening for the attempt.  Kevin would launch his Kadet from Olmsted's ball field, we'd jump in the truck and head out toward Uncle Wayne's, having roughly figured on four fuel stops along the 15 mile route.

In the years since, when flying from Olmsted's ballpark, I've always chosen to spiral up and out, along the field's perimeter.  Kevin was confident in the power of the mighty Fox though, and chose to launch from home plate, across the pitcher's mound, then climbing up and over the powerline surrounding the ball field.

True to plan, the trainer blasted across the the dirt, rotating up and away toward the powerline. Here, as they say, 'The Plan Went Awry'.  The Kadet climbed steadily, but looked like it wouldn't clear the line.  A the last instant, Kevin jammed in hard rudder, but the wire still caught the Kadet's wing---slicing through 'till it met the spars---where it stopped.  The fuselage, however, kept going...at full power...into the packed dirt of a tennis court's parking area.

From the other side of the field, the impact resembled a kind of momentary 'balsa fountain', followed with that loud, hollow 'CASHUNK!' most of us know all too well.  There were some expletives this time, as we dejectedly walked toward the wreckage...slowly at first...but turning suddenly to a full-blown sprint when smoke puffed from the debris field!  The nicad pack had been crunched and shorted, and nearly burned up Kevin's pulverized balsa.

I had film in my little camera this time, though intended for a much more glorious purpose, so the painful moment was recorded for posterity.

The Plane:



The Wire:



The Wreckage:



Note the fractured battery pack in the lower center:



We picked up most of the larger chunks, the wing was retrieved from the wire, knocked from it's perch with a borrowed tennis ball, and we dragged ourselves on back to Kevin's house.

And yet, it STILL wasn't over for the Mark I's wing.  Kevin bought MORE sheet and square stock, but this time designed his own plane...a sort of stand-off-scale Bonanza, complete with "V" tail and homemade mixer.  This time, the wing found a much more permanent home, flying in it's new persona, along side my Goldberg Shoestring for several years before Kevin moved to start a new business in Texas.



I just recently talked to Kevin (after some 35 years), and he still has this plane, which we may try to get flying again.

Awesome stories and photos, guys!

Kim wrote:

The Wing That Wouldn't Die !!!

I learned to fly in late 1976-77, using the Mark I Kadet owned by a great friend of mine, Kevin Robertson.  He had started flying control line with us a few years before, and had a tenacious attitude toward building that I'd come to really envy.  In the summer of '76, he built a Sig Kadet, and bought a used EK Logitrol radio to steer it....by coincidence, the very radio used in the Kadet's building instructions.  He had a new Fox R/C of some type in it, though we'd later discover the wonderful O.S. engines.

Kevin had learned to fly mostly on his own, along with help from some local flyers.  He generously offered flight lessons to give me my first taste of 'real' R/C flying (read that as my NOT having to chase my often unresponsive, escapement equipped Mini Mambo!).  This ensured that I'd eventually HAVE to build my own Kadet.

Kevin's infant son, Shannon gets some stick time on his dad's Kadet:



On one calm Saturday evening, we were flying in the often-used pasture next to Wayne's house, with Kevin expanding his skill level by practicing loops, snap rolls, and the irresistible low passes. Kevin had been doing 'Scale Loops':  Power up, gentle dive, pull up into the loop, power off coming across the top, round out and power back up for level flight or another loop.

After several loops, each getting larger in diameter, he brought the trainer down the backside with power up, and hauled back hard on the elevator.  The Kadet made it through level flight and into about 30 degrees worth of pitch-up before the wing's rubber bands exploded off their dowel pegs.

It was one of those slow-motion moments as we watched the fuselage continue it's ballistic arc, with the only words being mine as I leaned toward Kevin and said in a low voice, "You might ought to throttle back..."

The idling Fox probably helped the Kadet's fuse to strike terra firma at maybe a tenth of a mile per hour less or so, but the carnage was still pretty impressive.  The wing was totally unharmed, fluttering down and landing in the grass.  Before gathering the wreckage, Kevin plugged the servos and battery back into the receiver, and got the happy surprise that everything still worked...or at least wiggled on command.

I didn't have film for my little Kodak 110 camera and couldn't record this event, so it was lost to history.

Almost immediately, Kevin bought some sheet and square stock, and set about building a new fuselage from the kit's very complete plans.

It seemed like no time before his fleet of one aircraft was back on line.  I'd finished my training with his new plane, and he had started a couple other projects, when we decided on trying a new adventure.  A man and his wife had flown a Carl Goldberg Falcon Coast-to-Coast in 1976, so we figured that flying up to my Uncle Wayne's house from our hometown ought to be a breeze.

We managed to get us a pick-up truck chase vehicle, and a calm Saturday evening for the attempt.  Kevin would launch his Kadet from Olmsted's ball field, we'd jump in the truck and head out toward Uncle Wayne's, having roughly figured on four fuel stops along the 15 mile route.

In the years since, when flying from Olmsted's ballpark, I've always chosen to spiral up and out, along the field's perimeter.  Kevin was confident in the power of the mighty Fox though, and chose to launch from home plate, across the pitcher's mound, then climbing up and over the powerline surrounding the ball field.

True to plan, the trainer blasted across the the dirt, rotating up and away toward the powerline. Here, as they say, 'The Plan Went Awry'.  The Kadet climbed steadily, but looked like it wouldn't clear the line.  A the last instant, Kevin jammed in hard rudder, but the wire still caught the Kadet's wing---slicing through 'till it met the spars---where it stopped.  The fuselage, however, kept going...at full power...into the packed dirt of a tennis court's parking area.

From the other side of the field, the impact resembled a kind of momentary 'balsa fountain', followed with that loud, hollow 'CASHUNK!' most of us know all too well.  There were some expletives this time, as we dejectedly walked toward the wreckage...slowly at first...but turning suddenly to a full-blown sprint when smoke puffed from the debris field!  The nicad pack had been crunched and shorted, and nearly burned up Kevin's pulverized balsa.

I had film in my little camera this time, though intended for a much more glorious purpose, so the painful moment was recorded for posterity.




url=https://servimg.com/view/16842846/4520][/url]

We picked up most of the larger chunks, the wing was retrieved from the wire, knocked from it's perch with a borrowed tennis ball, and we dragged ourselves on back to Kevin's house.

And yet, it STILL wasn't over for the Mark I's wing.  Kevin bought MORE sheet and square stock, but this time designed his own plane...a sort of stand-off-scale Bonanza, complete with "V" tail and homemade mixer.  This time, the wing found a much more permanent home, flying in it's new persona, along side my Goldberg Shoestring for several years before Kevin moved to start a new business in Texas.


I just recently talked to Kevin (after some 35 years), and he still has this plane, which we may try to get flying again.

So that is why you shouldn't fly larger engines and stick with the Cox .049's.

happy dad        

Too many to count.  Like stupid epsiode #1 when as a teen I thought if I lofted my C/L hollow log it would just circle around and fall to earth.  I didn't calculate the wind though.  It may be in Kentucky.

#2  Friend and I thought it would be neat to set stick built rubber banders on fire and launch them into a dry field.  

#3. Years later I burned up the rest of the stick builts in a Franklin stove.  Balsa burns hot and flies up starting a chimney fire singing the paneling, a pot of cold water tossed on the fire created steam which put it out.

#4  I really thought I could fly R/C in a restricted space.  Drove 10 miles home, got a ladder and fished it out of a pine tree.  

#5   After a span of 35 years I tried flying C/L again with predictable results.

rsv1cox wrote:Too many to count.  Like stupid epsiode #1 when as a teen I thought if I lofted my C/L hollow log it would just circle around and fall to earth.  I didn't calculate the wind though.  It may be in Kentucky.

#2  Friend and I thought it would be neat to set stick built rubber banders on fire and launch them into a dry field.  

#3. Years later I burned up the rest of the stick builts in a Franklin stove.  Balsa burns hot and flies up starting a chimney fire singing the paneling, a pot of cold water tossed on the fire created steam which put it out.

#4  I really thought I could fly R/C in a restricted space.  Drove 10 miles home, got a ladder and fished it out of a pine tree.  

#5   After a span of 35 years I tried flying C/L again with predictable results.

#5 is a winner.

happydad

I've done some silly things in the past, like forgetting to turn on the transmitter.  The biggest mistake was probably when I got my first large scale model with a Zenoah G-38 engine on it.  I was used to flying a .40 sized model, so when I brought plane in for a landing on its first flight, I set up the base to final turn with the usual sight picture.  Unfortunately, since the plane was so much bigger, it was twice as far out on the base leg, and on the other side of a tree line.  So on final, only the engine and prop came through the treeline on the final approach....  That was 21 years ago, and I'm still using the salvaged 1/4" spruce sticks from the wings for various airplane builds.

My most recent "oops"moment was on my BTC-4B when it had a little structural issue.  At the 1:03 mark on the video below.




The "Oops!" Mark

Got a couple of such stupid  stories like forgetting to turn on the RX switch on my RC plane before I hand-launched it (lost 2 planes because of that stupidity with TD 010-s and was weeping like a snotty kid in the middle of the swamp/bushes where I ran after them in hopes of finding them...no way... ), but these are just one of a kind boring stories.

I tell ya the other one if you promise you will not laugh at me....well, wherever I travel in the world (and I travel frequently because of my job) I always put a COX engine in my handpack just in case...kind of a token or what...just as I write this in Germany where I landed tonight, I have a reedie born in the 70's in my pack...a symptom of childish obsession...

A Cox engine is better than a rabbit's foot!

A LONG time ago.. I held a Cox Babe Bee in my hand, inside my garage.. and started it with an experimental disc (you said experiments.. right?).. in place of a prop. I was ISO something to make a ducted fan. It was a piece of one of those rising-heat whirly-gigs that I took apart. The tin disc-part was about 2" round with several vanes evenly spaced inside it's circumference.. and a center hole for mounting.. which I did.. using a nice Tee Dee-style spinner. Using my nifty homemade electric-starter.. I engaged the spinner.

The engine started with a scream that would make your hair stand on end..    and ran for about one second before throwing the disc and my spinner somewhere never to be found.    There I stood.. still holding my starter in one hand and a smoking engine in the other. Surprisingly.. nothing broke or seized. Rpm's for that one second had to be near 30K. If it had run any longer than it did.. it would have likely blown up!

balogh wrote:Got a couple of such stupid  stories like forgetting to turn on the RX switch on my RC plane before I hand-launched it (lost 2 planes because of that stupidity with TD 010-s and was weeping like a snotty kid in the middle of the swamp/bushes where I ran after them in hopes of finding them...no way... ), but these are just one of a kind boring stories.

I tell ya the other one if you promise you will not laugh at me....well, wherever I travel in the world (and I travel frequently because of my job) I always put a COX engine in my handpack just in case...kind of a token or what...just as I write this in Germany where I landed tonight, I have a reedie born in the 70's in my pack...a symptom of childish obsession...

No laughing here! That made me smile, good story, nothing wrong with a cox engine to keep you comforted.

Carry on! Another greenie for you.

Ron

ARUP wrote:A Cox engine is better than a rabbit's foot!

Sure...and smells better too...