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Overconfidence can bite
The story:
The week before I had a minor issue on my 450, it has a nervous twitch in the tail, It happens mostly in Heading hold - I dialled the gain down and it seemed to go away. But on the next flight it appeared again but dissapeared after 2 minutes of hovering. strange! This happened on the next two batteries as well.
Over the week I added some lights (battery saver lights) and tidied the wiring up. Whilst I was at it I remounted the gyro in case it was that.
This week I started out with the gyro on heading hold but the glitch was still there but less than the week before then I selected rate and the glitch dissapeared completely. I had such a nice hover that I decided to take the training gear off
.
The second flight without the training gear was a bit of an anti climax! No wags and on rate gyro. I mentioned this fact in the pits and was asked how I managed to hold it steady on rate gyro. My answer was that when I started over 15 years ago there was only rate gyro heheh.
The third flight started like any other, fitted the battery, plugged in the lights and re-fitted the canopy. Out to the flight box, I had chosen a corner slot, not my normal one. Feeling slightly confident now I plugged the battery into the ESC only to find that one of the leads had become detached from the connector. Back to the pits to change to my last battery and make the broken connector safe.
Back on the flight line I connected the battery and my mate who had the slot booked after me came out to say I could take my time as it didn't matter. OK I was feeling a little nervous because of the battery incident. Anyway I decided to move around in the box - to the left then to the right and back. Starting the makings of a lazy 8 after a few of these I ended up with the heli facing towards me and getting closer - quickly! So I dumped the heli onto the ground on the front edge of the left skid and the heli bounced a little as the rotors span down.
On the face of it there was no apparent damage but when I was checking the heli over yesterday I noticed that the fin was loose as was the tail box. Whether this happened in the heavy landing or before I don't know. Anyway all is fixed now.
Moral? don't rush
The week before I had a minor issue on my 450, it has a nervous twitch in the tail, It happens mostly in Heading hold - I dialled the gain down and it seemed to go away. But on the next flight it appeared again but dissapeared after 2 minutes of hovering. strange! This happened on the next two batteries as well.
Over the week I added some lights (battery saver lights) and tidied the wiring up. Whilst I was at it I remounted the gyro in case it was that.
This week I started out with the gyro on heading hold but the glitch was still there but less than the week before then I selected rate and the glitch dissapeared completely. I had such a nice hover that I decided to take the training gear off
. The second flight without the training gear was a bit of an anti climax! No wags and on rate gyro. I mentioned this fact in the pits and was asked how I managed to hold it steady on rate gyro. My answer was that when I started over 15 years ago there was only rate gyro heheh.
The third flight started like any other, fitted the battery, plugged in the lights and re-fitted the canopy. Out to the flight box, I had chosen a corner slot, not my normal one. Feeling slightly confident now I plugged the battery into the ESC only to find that one of the leads had become detached from the connector. Back to the pits to change to my last battery and make the broken connector safe.
Back on the flight line I connected the battery and my mate who had the slot booked after me came out to say I could take my time as it didn't matter. OK I was feeling a little nervous because of the battery incident. Anyway I decided to move around in the box - to the left then to the right and back. Starting the makings of a lazy 8 after a few of these I ended up with the heli facing towards me and getting closer - quickly! So I dumped the heli onto the ground on the front edge of the left skid and the heli bounced a little as the rotors span down.
On the face of it there was no apparent damage but when I was checking the heli over yesterday I noticed that the fin was loose as was the tail box. Whether this happened in the heavy landing or before I don't know. Anyway all is fixed now.
Moral? don't rush
, I think we have all been there
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