5 minutes saved £30 wasted. A cautionary tale

[withnail]

Oooo, I could kick myself into the middle of next week for being such a foolish chap!

Waking up this morning I noticed it was absolutly dead calm outside, not even the uppermost branches of the trees where moving. "A great chance for a little outdoor flying" I thought. I waited until around 10am so the neighbours wouldn't complain and headed out. I tried to unfasten the clothes line that runs across the garden but found that the plastic covering has started to degrade and made it impossible to budge. Rather than heading inside for a sharp pair of scissors I thought "No problem, I can keep clear of that" (I think some of you may have guessed where this story is heading!)

I did a couple of short flights to practice landing on a particular paving stone and then thought I'd fly across to the garden table. I gave the heli a touch too much throttle on the next take off and before I could compose myself found her heading, nose in, directly for the washing line at rota height. In a moment of panic I turned left instead of right and hit said washing line! Of course she crash landed on the concrete path rather than the long grass either side and sent a shower of bits about the place.

Just a reminder to other beginners out there; if you think there is something you can do to make your flying area safer from hazards, don't delay!! I just count myself lucky that, after taking advice from this forum, I am sticking with a cheap to reapair ESky Lama for some time to come!

Spare parts have been ordered and I should be back in the air in a couple of days.

Cheers

Mark

[fatmantom]

those dam washing lines!!

it has happend to me a while ago and its amazing how easy they find it to completly destroy heli's.... it destroyed the whole head and tail of my mini pred!

cheers,

[Sao]

Ah yes back garden flying

I trashed my old piccolo pro into a cherry tree once trying to avoid crashing into a pond

[Fixxxer]

Aint the only one Sao, last summer I had to avoid the damn guinea pig run on the back lawn coming out of a low turn, missed that and had the washing line pole next in line. Only option was to put it in, that or hit the pole and do god knows how much more damage. Broke a set of sab's, skids and main gear. everything else survived but I learnt my lesson, Hovering about is fine but anything more is just asking for trouble. Confined spaces mean you always have one eye on your surroundings and it throws you concentration.

[moonmanflyer]

I been there also, early last year flying the lama 4 around the garden, a bit to keen on the throttle, straight into the washing line, snapped the line and all got tangled up as it hit the floor, bent the outer and inner shafts, and all blades ca-put.

[robgt]

I recall a couple of years ago getting my Trex450 rebuilt (after a part failure in flight binned it) - and being keen to see how the newly rebuilt heli flew, took it out to the small back garden (approx 25 foot long by 12 foot wide - big rockery at the far end...)

The heli was hovering lovely, felt lively etc, so I decided to flip it over. I flew to the far end of the garden in order to fly backwards at myself to then flip it over going forwards (increasing my chances of success in the area I had) - sadly, having gone just past halfway over the forward flip I suddenly realised it wasn't going to get over in the space I had and I decided to try and pull out... doh!
Suffice to say, the cyclics being as slow as they were, it didn;t have enough space to pull out either and planted itself firmly into the rockery!

Lesson learned - I don't flight test (beyond the hover) in the back garden any more
LOL
Cheers,
Rob