Dumb Thumbs Strikes Again

[Alwyn Gee]

Sunday morning, up with the lark. Sounds like a cue for a song but I definatlely wasn't singing after my first flight of the day. I was enjoying flying my foamy E-Flight Hurricane, got a bit carried away and let it drift too far away. No problem thought I, I'll just do a "split S" and bring it back towards me. First mistake! should not have tried a manouver at that distance that was going to take me nearer the ground. Then I discovered the reason camourflage colour schemes are so called. Totally lost orientation and to compound it while I was juggling the sticks to try to sort out which way I was going I think I forgot to put the throttle back in and it fell out of the sky from about 30 feet.

On reaching the model my worst fears where realised when I found the fuse snapped across the middle of the hatch opening, the wings detached and split apart and a lot of torn and cracked foam around the roots but despite the considerable damage there was not one bit of loose foam lying about the crash site. even the canopy which had detached from the hatch was undamaged.

After a lot of glue sniffing and burnt fingers in hot water on Tuesday the pheonix rose into the sky again on Wednesday and except for a fair bit of vibration from the motor it flew pretty good. I discovered that the motor shaft was slightly bent and I hadn't noticed it when I ran the motor on its own but with the fairly long prop adapter that comes with this model exagerates it. Grip the moter gently in the vice, find the high point on the shaft and a little pressure in the right direction with the jaws of a shifting spanner and hey-ho everything is running true again.

It would appear that my apprenticeship with Hawker Siddely Aviation so many moons ago was not wasted after all. Just a bit of filling and rubbing and a few spots of paint and once it gets 3 feet in the air nobody will know anything happened to it

Still, I did order the last plug & play version from Kings Lynn Models on Monday morning and it arrived Tuesday morning, brillian service I'll just leave it in the box meantime and hopefully Murphey's Law will kick in and I'll never crash it again!!!!!

Alwyn