wjw
Senior Heliman
Location: Cape Coral, Florida usa
| MENTAL NOTE TO SELF:
Next time a designer, manufacture and retailer sends you a FREE upgrade without even having to ask for it........INSTALL IT!!!!!
While placing an order with Chris Bergen, I explained that I had just purchased a used older gasser intreped G-26 with very little use. It had the old style bellcrank on the tail that could fail under extream loads with the G-26. A new stronger one was available as a upgrade replacement. Without even asking he sent me the new one at no charge. Free upgrade parts,how often does that happen with other vendors, LIKE NEVER . I got the part last Wednesday and was planning on installing it on that following Saturday. I went out for some test flying on Thursday (before installing the bellcrank) to work on the tuning and curves. Toward the end of the flight I was pushing it pretty hard and that is when all heck broke loose.
Simply amazing the pirro rate you can get out of one these things when you have no tail at all. I have been practicing autos with my x-cell gasser 1005 for about 2 years now, so that really saved my butt. This thing autos like a kite, I have never seen a machine so stable even when spinning so fast it's a blurr. Once I had enough altitude to hit throttle hold, then I was able to bring it down in front of me pretty smooth. When this thing let loose, something shaved off my tail blades in mid air, I think the bellcrank may have broke off and went into the tail blades. Either way, it came down with the tail blades shaved almost to the blade grips. Only half of the bellcrank remained, the carbon pushrod was hanging there without any evidence of the missing half of the bellcrank. The pushrod was undamaged. Everything else was in perfect shape, not a scratch.
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