Pilot down.

Been a while..All the warning signs were there but I still flew.

The Seagull Nemesis my speed sled went down today MIA for 4 hours.

I charged the batteries last week and thought they took a bit long to charge for a short flight..Last night I toped them up and took a while to bring them back up, it wasnt used last week so they should have been full. I did a discharge cylcle on them and seemed OK.
I had a flight today without any problems. This flight was a non thrashing flight. All went well untill I used up all the fuel and did a pefect landing into the strong wind.

I last flight of the day was the Nemesis, but this was a show off aerobatic run I had just come out of spiral and banked for a landing and noticed the ailerons were slugish. I throttled the engine back and then droped the nose for a short final The nose droped but was very slow coming back up and was now doing a stall spiral down I had a lot of hieght to play with I stoped the spiral with the ailerons but couldnt pull the nose up any more I killed the engine and held the elevator stick down, yelled out no controll as she started to spiral again down behind the sand hills.
A soon as she went behind the hills the Telemetry started beeping RX signal loss..

I couldnt find the bird in the bush where I thought she went down.I kept the TX on and used it as a locating beacon and the area I found the signal from the RX was the same area that one of the other pilots who saw her go in was flying over the last known sighting so I could get my bearings. I searched that bush for while with no luck and all the time the TX was saying no signal.
I went to the other side on the road that runs past the hills and was getting the signal back. I drove around finding the strongest signal and it was nowhere where we saw her go in.
By this time there was a big storm front comming in so I had to turn off the TX and call it a day.
That storm dumped over 25mm in 1/2 an hour.
I went back with boots on this time as the bush is hard work in thongs.
I switched on the TX at the same spot and the RX was still going. When I found the strongest signal I turned the TX to range check which is good for 30 -50 meters and tracked the bird at the bottom of the trees.
She had leveled out and landed at the base of some trees taking out all the wings and UC.
Dont know if Ill repair her as the fuse is torn at the wing roots..

If the batteries had failed the TX would have given me a warning beep but this didnt happen untill she went behind the hills. Also if the batteries were failing I wouldnt expect to get a signal from the RX after 4 hours plus the rain all servos but one were still working.

The strange thing is the horizon stabs were torn off but sign of impact marks unlike the main wings.

So Im still not to sure what was the cause..This is the 2nd bird to do this. The other was the Cessna 310..
Im wondering it I do have a problem with the FrSky radio system.

This is how I found her, canopy landed like that as well.



Edited by cptn blinky - 19/Feb/2012 at 2:17pm

Nah, too wet for them.

OUCH!!!!!!!

I used to fly from a topdressing airstrip and the ground was quite soft in winter. On a number of occasions I went in at 45 degrees and the plane (well built balsa + ply reinforcing) would bury itself almost back to the wing. Just dug it out, cleaned the mud out of the carb, hosed it down, and fitted a new prop and she was ready to go again.

Can't do that with foamies.

Edited by Sooty - 03/Jul/2012 at 7:43am

I've never been able to find the carbies, can someone help?