chris24g
Senior Heliman
Location: Hayward, CA
| About a month ago I was putting around with my falcon electric (conversion) over the small ravine behind my house. I had just turned around to bring it back when all of a sudden the heli starts piro'ing out of control. Hit throttle hold but nothing, started banging the cyclics in a panic, but nothing as well. All I could do was watch the train wreck. The heli started oscillating, then it chopped half of the boom off. Then this gang of eucalyptus trees comes out of nowhere and swallows my heli. Maybe they were bitter because they chose a different species of tree for the Lord of the Rings movie or something, I don't know. All I heard was the heli striking branches. Then silence. Then a very faint sound of a piece of the heli hitting the ground, meaning that the heli was still up there...somewhere. I estimated the height of the trees to be about 150-200 feet. It failed at about 175 feet.
I stood there for a full minute, radio on, thumbs still on the sticks, in disbelief. Finally walked down and saw pieces of the boom strike. Found half of the tail boom with a destroyed tail case and 1/2 of a main blade and nothing else. My canopy is flourescent yellow, but was nowhere to be seen in the canopy or undergrowth.
Heli specs:
Century Falcon 46 with CCPM conversion (basically a Raven 50)
600mm carbon blades
metal hub
Hacker A50 motor
14s A123 pack
Phoenix HV45 ESC
JR R950X Rx
CSM 560SL/Futaba 9254
General Lazer Stabilizer(!)
Carbon fin and tail
Hitec 645MG servos on cyclic
oh and a Spektrum remote antenna that I had just mounted for testing the DSM2 conversion I had recently purchased.
Over the next 3 weeks, I would painfully relive the incident and trudge down to the bottom of the ravine and stare up into the trees until my neck hurt. The flourescent canopy would be obvious to see, I had thought. I stumbled onto my A123 pack, which helped to ease the void in my wallet (that was the faint thud I first heard).
I called a tree service to climb the tree, but they wouldn't because I didn't know what tree it was, or even if it was still in the tree. I'd have to shell out at least $200 and that wouldn't even guarantee it would be found.
Stay tuned for PART 2 |
