Lars Blaabjerg
Senior Heliman
Location: Aarhus, Denmark
| Throughout my career as a model heli pilot, I have been watched over by some kind of heli-guardian angel. My trusty Raptor 30 has seen me through 2 years of neck braking, dare devil flying from the learning stages to the beginning of inverted flight. It has had many hard landings and autorotations. Numerous recoveries from completely lost orientation less than one mistake high. It has even finished a loop i a wheat field (no damage). The raptor only ever crashed once shortly after I purchased it, due to me being an overconfident beginner surely capable of slow pirouettes 
Well, I wanted something more powerful. I sold the Raptor and bought a Freya. After assembling it, it wasn't really weather for flying, but I still wanted to start the engine to hear it tick in idle. I had of course checked everything (twice). I took all the gear out on the porch and started the engine. As it turned out, I probably should have checked the throttle servo direction one more time. The OS70 jumped into action at full throttle with the starter shaft lodged in the starter coupling. I had not put on the blades or the canopy, and I was so surprised, that I didn't manage to grab the bladeholders firmly enough. I spun out of control. The flybar pounded the starter and managed to fetch the wires from the starter and the glow starter, sending them both flying as well as the paddles, while the wires constricted around the washout snapping several links and bending most control rods. In the ensuing chaos of whirly things the heli managed to turn around and put me on the opposite side of the heli than the fuel intake of the carburaetor. I wrestled with the beserking heli to turn it around so that I could pull of the fuel tube, which I finally managed.
Total damage:
Besides the obvious damage to the flybar and washout
Fast spinning tail rotor bashed my brand new 9CHP breaking of a switch and giving it a good scratching. Destroying the tailblades and the tail rotor hub in the process. It also managed to hit my field box, badly scoffing it. This also broke the gears of the 9253 tail servo.
The electric starter apparently hit the GY401 right in front of the start shaft pretty squarely, smashing it completely.
The starter extension shaft was pretty badly bent, as was the output shaft of the electric starter.
Broken radio tray.
Compromising pictures taken of the entire incident by my girlfriend (I have since forgiven her).
This is definately the most expensive incident I have ever had with model helicopters (apart from actually getting involved with them). And the Freya has never even flown yet.
/Lars |
I took it up to about 30ft before the blades were going too slow to keep going, tried to get upright.......with not much luck. Landed hard on the front of the skids and blades, broke my frames, skids, only thing that was ok was the tail section. I could have easliy avoided this one......by not trying to show off in the first place lol -.jpg)
