rbort
Elite Veteran
Location: Franklin, MA - U.S.A.
| Its a long story, but its here in full so you can have all the details to form your own opinion and offer any advice.
I show up to my local field one evening with a heli flying friend and there is this oldtimer (70+ guy) flying his electric plane. This guy hates helicopters and every time in the past that I've shown up to the field he packs up and leaves, even if he is not flying as many times I find him there just sitting on the bench talking with another old timer. I've always said hi to him and been nice, even told him let me know if you want to fly I'll land or stay down so you can enjoy a flight without a helicopter in the air, etc. He just always "grunts" and walks away from past experience. Many times as soon as I put my heli on the runway getting ready to pull start it, I hear him driving off from the parking lot...
Anyway last year one of the club members in my field went off and formed his own heli only field as there was some rough spots with airplane guys not getting along with heli guys (even though I've always gotten along with everyone) and basically he left and took all the heli guys with him dropping the club membership in half. The airplane guys were happy (I think) but now they are not super happy with dues being higher due to less members (I think).
ANYWAY, so my friend and I pull up with our helis and are talking in the parking lot and this old man sees us, lands, and comes back to his car. I said HI to him in the parking lot and the first thing out of his mouth is "I thought we got rid of you f-ing helicopter guys". WTF? I tell him that's not a nice thing to say and he says "we got our own field so I should go fly over there with the guy who made the new club as they (airplane guys) can't fly their planes when we fly helis. Mind you I'm an airplane AND heli pilot, and I'm also the VP of this club so I like to go there and fly both styles sometimes on the same day. I don't want to fly an airplane, pack up and drive to another field to fly my heli. So I tell him that's a rude thing to say and he gets pissed, jumps in his car, backs up, runs into my friend's car (bumper), and takes off! My friend says siht he just hit my car, and we go over there and look and he's taken the paint off the bumper of this large SUV. Should I call the cops on him he says? I'm feeling bad on the way he treated us and as much as I'd love to, I don't have the heart to do it. I think I know where he went (nearby park), so I go after him there as my friend is pissed (damaged his new car) and is looking for SOMETHING other than a hit and run.
I go to find this guy, and he is talking with his buddy old timer there and walking in the park. They usually fly there electrics, but they can't today as there are people playing in the fields. I pull up and tell him what he did, he said he didn't do anything and didn't feel anything, and I say you'd better come down and look/apologize/something as my friend is pissed at you -- I saw the whole car joust around! Furthermore, I've always been super nice to you and there is NO reason you should treat me like a jerk just because I fly a helicopter. I've been a member of that club for over 10 years and served on the board for at least 5 of the 10. Allright, he'll come down and look.
So him and his buddy drive over, he looks at the bumper and says no he didn't do that. My friend says its not a question of whether he did it or not, we saw him hit the car. Oh yeah he says? I'll give you 10 bucks! 10 bucks? What am I going to do with to bucks my friend says? Why don't you take it to a body shop of your choice and get an estimate to see how much it will cost? Oh no he says, I can't afford that, sorry, raises his arms and walks away. We just looked dumbfounded but I said let's just forget it if you're OK with that, trying to be nice or whatnot. So that was that day.
A week later (getting into what you've been waiting for) I come to the field with my Spectra-g and this guy is there with his friend. I park my truck behind his car on the other side of the parking lot (same side where my friend got hit), and his buddy sarcastically yells to this guy "be careful when you back up!" as he walks past me, like he's making fun of the situation. Ooops I think, so I just decide to move my truck away to another spot and not even give him a chance to hit it.
I gas up my heli and there is one other airplane pilot with a trainer plane that he turned into a taildragger. This guy doesn't like helicopters either, but he's a very good pilot and I think he likes me but he doesn't like my heli. Always more interested to talk to me when I have my airplanes out than helis. Anyway, so I gas up and ready for a test flight after the day before adjusting the throttle arm to servo distance. I put the thing on the runway and I'm going up and down and adjusting throttle curves to match the gv-1 speeds now. I look over and this guy started his plane and he is in a pilot station ready to take off, but this old man just walked over to him and is talking to him. I go up, come down, some more adjustments, and he is just finishing up talking and walking away - actually leaving. Don't know what he said, whether its goodbye (never seen him talk to him before like this on the pilot station) or something like I hate this guy and I want to get rid of him, who knows.
Anyway, so I'm good to go and I takeoff, and the heli is flying awesome. Just perfect, servo adjustment made things better, and what can I say, its so good I can't think of anything else to do. Meanwhile this guy takes off, and shortly afterwards I feel like I'm doing collision avoidance. There was a guy standing there with him -- like a spotter but that's not required at our field. I remember thinking to myself he should be watching out for me (hopefully) and telling him to stay away from here or there where I am. But to the contrary, I feel like he's flying like I don't exist, just doing what he is doing and I'm constantly having to get out of his way.
After several minutes, I look at my timer and its at 13 minutes (only 2 minutes to go) so I decide I'm going to land a little early as I felt like I'm just watching him and not enjoying much of the flight. Might as well land and go help my friend with his little electric heli in the hover zone area. Here comes what you've been waiting for:
So I'm up at about 200 feet, and I'm about to hit the autorotation switch and auto down to the runway when I hear the airplane guy coming in for a high speed low pass over the runway from my right. Knowing he is coming through, I stop and hold a hover over the runway about 150 to 200feet up (I'd say twice the height of the trees), probably right in line where the airplane pilot is standing on my left as I'm coming into the wind to land which is coming from my right. I figured I'd wait for him to pass, hit the auto switch and land as he is going outbound downwind. Well, to my shock and surprise, he pulls into a vertical right between us and all I see is this missle going straight up towards my heli. I couldn't believe what I was seeing and I froze for 1 to 2 seconds as his airplane climbed from 5 feet to 150+ feet, probably going 70mph and BANG, slams right into my pride and joy from the bottom up.
Immediately there is a loud bang, parts fly off, and the blades stop instantly. Actually one blade broke off at the root and fell down to the runway, the other blade I believe swung around and whacked the boom off, and, in and instant all I see is the body of the helicopter still upright, still intact, start to fall and it drops straight down level to the runway. Just before impact man it looked good, but when it hit it broke both skids and cracked my nice Jewel paint job canopy that is not even a couple of month's old. Heli hits the ground, and I look up to see the plane coming in nose down straight vertically with the right wing flapping in the wing. A couple of seconds later it hits the runway, and the dead silence is sickening. HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN? Only two people on the field, all the sky, and he has to manage to hit me?
Well he says "he liked that plane" and "sorry I didn't mean to hit you - it wasn't on purpose!" Said he was "looping" but I'm just as good as an airplane pilot as he is if not better and a looping plane would have had to hit me on the top side of the loop as he's coming around, this one was going straight up like a rocket. And, him being such a good pilot that can put that plane anywhere he wants when he flies, I didn't see him pull up or push down elevator to steer away from the heli. It was high enough, not so close, that I think he had time to react. He said the plane was going fast and he tried to throttle back, but, flying an airlane would you throttle back and stay on course waiting for it to slow or would you steer away? You be the judge.
At first he said he would try to make it up to me, like maybe give me $50 a month or something, but then after realizing its going to be at least $500, he said he didn't have any money and thet maybe in a couple of years when things are better he'll make it up to me, promised and shook my hand so to speak.
The damage was quite extensive, as the initial hit in the air caused a boom strike, and then the impact on the ground later from the free fall didn't help either. Damaged items are:
Tail rotor output shaft, tail blades, boom, torque tube, tail rotor pushrod, boom supports, main frames (cracked where boom ripped out of body), boom guides between frames, stripped tail 9256 servo, stripped inner white gear, main shaft, flybar, axle, metal blade grip arms, blades, flybar carrier extension tubes and CF plates for that, landing gear struts, JR rubber dampeners, dubro 16oz tank (cracked), v3 muffler (dented usable but not nice looking any more), minair air cleaner, and canopy.
I saw the same airplane pilot at the field a couple of days later when I went to fly my 1005 gasser, and he says "hey Raj, I got another trainer!". I said don't you fly that thing when I'm flying!
I've been rebuilding the heli and its 95% complete. The only thing left is to put the landing gear on and rebuild the flybar cage, put the paddles on. I actually had a really hard time pulling the flybar out of the flybar extension tubes, and ended up breaking the CF plates and damaging the tubes while trying to get the flybar out, hence I'm waiting on the 2nd order to come with these parts to finish. Should arrive today/tomorrow so I can get back in the air this weekend.
So now after all this, I need to figure out HOW to make people at the field more careful. The bottom line of the thing is that either he is careless, doesn't look where he is going, or was trying to do something on purpose. I asked him why he looped since I was there, and he said "I knew you were there as I could hear your engine, but I didn't think you were "right there"". Why the hell pull up in the first place if you know there is a heli overhead? Just do your high speed pass, get your kicks, and be gone, but NO....
Very painful for me as I try to be SUPER good and fly them like I'm in them, doing careful maintenance and everything possible to keep them flying and not crash. The last time I broke my blades and the boom was back at the 2006 MHA funfly when my rear servo failed and I felt it at 200 feet up, brought the heli level down to 5 feet holding full forward stick, but my mistake was to collective up at the bottom which caused it to lean back and boom strike. I bought a new pair of SAB blades from Tim at that funfly, and, if it wasn't for an airplane pilot I would still be flying them today. 368 flights they lasted, and I had a good record going only to be busted by something out of my control.
SO, what's you're advice? I'm planning to meet with the other club officers to discuss this. How do you get people to stay out of your airspace? As it is now people can fly any way they want and if they hit you there is no consequences. When I fly I'm always looking out for other people and not executing maneuvers if the sky is not clear ahead, but then you get people with $100 airplanes that just "don't care". Go and let everyone else get out of your way, if they hit "oh well" and just get a new plane.
Even if we don't say they are 100% at fault, let's assume to be fair and people involved in a crash are each 50% at fault. I was thinking that if we instituted a club policy where people who hit in midair share the cost of repairs for both models, maybe that is the way to go. There is always the argument that I cannot afford 1/2 of your helicopter or your giant scale airplane as I fly a trainer, but if there was something like this in effect I'd bet you those guys wouldn't even come near you, and its very easy to do so as there is alot of sky out there. When I fly my heli I tend to be in some corner somewhere doing my thing, there is NO REASON for people to fly through that corner, but believe it or not, some do. 90% of clear sky out there, use that instead right? Maybe only if there was some consequence, otherwise its not happening and careless people will still be careless as always and have no regard to other people's models.
What do you guys think? Does it sound crazy or do you have any other suggestions and please don't say go fly somewhere else, this is my field too and I want to enjoy it just like the rest of them. I'm just looking for some respect of airspace, that's all.
Then I also thought if the guy claims he doesn't have any money, then just like in a law thing, you can serve your time if you can't pay your time. So, if my heli crash costs $750 and his airplane crash cost $250, then the total is $1000, divided by 2 is $500. Since I paid $750 and he $250, then he owes me $250. Either pay $250 to help with the repairs, or, if you can't afford it you get suspended for some sort of time. I though a dollar per day seems about right, as other midairs can be less expensive and if people don't want to pay on average maybe they get suspended for 4 months or so.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. Any help you guys can offer or pitch in for me to bring up with the club officers that will be great.
I'm not saying he did it on purpose, I don't know. I gave you all the details ofthe whole story, so you can form your own opinion and say what you think. Don't let me sway your opinion, you decide what you think happened.
Thanks guys, and the Spectra-g will fly again, soon to be shown in Hurlock, MD FF in a couple of weeks!
-=>Raja.
1005 Xcell Gas, BHH G26 3D Plus, Jewel Generator
Spectra-g, BHH G26 3D Plus, Jewel Generator |
, maybe the old guy told him to, and he would replace his plane if he did
