Its those trees again!

[Simon Chaddock]

A short flight to see the effect of the new fixed wheel undercarriage on the Giant Dragon.

First circuit aborted almost at touch down as a dog made a beeline for the plane (why do dogs chase model planes?) so go round again. Space a bit limited so the down wind leg had a bit of side as well. Now just how far away is that tree?

Crunch! 40' up and it started to rain!

Looked perfectly ok as it had come to rest in the fine branches right at the top.

I had just under an hour before it got dark and I wanted to get it down before the LiPo (the most expensive bit) was drained flat and wrecked.

At home coble up a long pole from three 2x1 batons bolted together with a 4m fishing rod duct taped on the end.  It just reached.

As is likely in these sort of situations more damage resulted from recovery than the initial impact. This was the only impact damage.

The more serious damage. resulting from the rescue.

Not too difficult to fix but it still hasn't actually landed on its wheel!

[Biggles' Elder Brother - Moderator]

The trouble with trees Simon is we all know they are magnetic

 

I don't know what the rest of you chaps' "other halves" are like but I've had two crashes in the last 12 months - and one of those was a mid-air I couldn't do much about. Sunday it was very cold down at the strip and about 2:30pm everyone was going home, so I packed up as well.

 

As I walk through the front door at about 3:00pm and call "Hello". my missus greets me with:

 

"You're back early - you haven't crashed again have you?"

 

Like its a weekly event!

 

Really fills a chap with confidence!

 

BEB

[Former Member]

[This posting has been removed]

[John Privett]

Posted by Biggles' Elder Brother - Moderator on 22/11/2010 22:49:25:

As I walk through the front door at about 3:00pm and call "Hello". my missus greets me with:

 

"You're back early - you haven't crashed again have you?"

 

 

Yep - I get greeted that way too if I come home early from flying. 

[Wingman]

Magnetic trees? - I have a theory about that - I think that when the wind is blowing through trees, the air above and downwind of trees becomes very disturbed so when our planes fly through this disturbed air a great deal of lift is lost. You then get the situation where when you try to fly over a tree you encounter less lift and the plane seems to get sucked into the top of the tree. Also, and I've seen this at our patch, if you make a steep banked turn downwind of a tree as in "whoops! I'd better get away from that tree" you are already in the turbulent zone and your plane's wing suffers a reduction in lift and crash! you're in the tree.  

[Simon Chaddock]

Wingman

Nice theory and could have some truth.

Trees, particularly in leaf, are extremely good as wind "absorbers" so there must indeed be a significant area of confused air down wind but in my case the wind was blowing partly towards the tree.

 

Pilot error, I simply misjudged how far away the plane was.

 

The Giant is big and bright yellow so looks closer than it is. Well that's my excuse!

[CARBON_ROD]

  Damn trees are always jumping out at you at critical point when flying !