jbeech
rrAdvertiser
Location: Sanford, FL (Orlando area)
| 11 frame sales so far while closing in on 600 registered owners. Tiger 50 frames are tough my friend. In two years with my own Tiger 50, just over 2000 flights, and 21 crashes, there have been two frames broken. And one of those was field repaired with liquid frame (JB Weld) so I could keep it flying. In fact, I only recently changed it out because a fellow at a fun fly queried me about it not looking professional - but it's still prefectly servicable (although not particularly pretty).
The very first frame exchange wasn't really a break though it rendered the frame's use questionable. Beresford Davis slam dunked the Tiger on the first flight with a new G3 receiver at Blacksheep in SC. That frame had been crashed many, many times! I replaced it because the upper main shaft bearing seat was stressed because the heli went in inverted at a very high rate of speed. if you know Beast, ask him how hard the Tiger hit.
The second break, a real break, was from a violent crash in front of God and Country (and more than a few in the peanut gallery) while my friend Pete Campbell was at the sticks performing a demo flight for me during the East Coast Extreme event lin CT. Pete was performing his trademark under 6 foot of altitude piro-flips (entirely too close to the ground in my view, but he does them all the time and is pretty darn good at it) during the failing light around 6:30 in the evening. Anyway, all he said was, "Oops!", a split second before a big time cloud of Connecticut dust rose to obscure the crash site. So the liquid frame repair was effected that evening in CT . . . and it held just fine until it let go in flight at a fun fly in Sacramento, CA.
So I fixed it again in CA, but this time I stripped the insulation off some copper wire and wrapped it around the break and put liquid frame on it again. And that same repaired frame was slam dunked big time by Robbie Haas of Tulsa, OK (ask him if it was a hard crash if you know him) at a fun fly in MO a few weeks ago . . . and the frame didn't break then either - though it did take out two gear sets, a receiver, and a set of very tough V-Blades as well as the usual boom, shaft, etc. And that's the very first time a crash has taken out gear sets other than once before on a S9243 tail rotor servo.
Of course I'm not claiming Tiger 50 frames are indestructible - so yes, I went too far when I asked if ANY Tiger 50 owners had broken them - but I promise you this, Tiger 50 frames are very, very tough and I bet we don't sell nearly as many as other brands do per crash. Look, I own a Raptor, I know they're pretty tough birds too, but I also know Raptor frames break at the ears in front (where the front landing gear bolts on) and sometimes even in a whimpy crash! For that very reason there's a carbon plate frame reinforcement upgrade available (though that makes engine removal more of a pain in the rear, of course) for the Raptor.
So there you have my most honest 2¢
John Beech - GM (and janitor)
Audacity Models |
I will have new Pictures of that field soon.
