Are You Sure?

[Steve]

Bit of an open ended question maybe, but one that's been bugging me for a while.........

I read a lot of threads about unfortunate dinks, bends, splats and crashes with various helis, and usually the owner seems to find the 'cause' of the crash as a faulty servo, or a dodgy regulator, or a switch that was made in the wrong country, or maybe even just dumb thumbs.

Thing is, can you really be sure that the cause of the 'misfortune' was the dodgy servo, iffy regulator, bent gyro etc or did that item get damaged in the impact along with all the other bits that are broke?

[brin]

to much time on your hands steve lol

[speedy jon]

i think sometimes people blame something because they dont want to or cant admit it was a pilot error.

but on the other hand up my flying site today one of the guys who has alot of experience had the left aileron servo fail causing his heli to roll down to the left and into the floor. after the bump we brought the heli back to the pits still powered up but engine wasnt running so we could find out what was wrong. we was confident the align servo had failed as the casing was boiling hot after the crash where the others where fine.

[Mart61]

I think you may be right, Steve, in at least some of the crashes.

Ultimately us "pilots" should carry the can for many of our crashes. Why? Well, unless the crash was genuinely caused and can be undeniably proven to be the result of a mechanical failure, most of the other causes are down to us:

• Loss of control in flight (dumb-thumbs)
• Heli not airworthy
  • loose hardware
  • missing hardware
  • damaged hardware
  • Incorrect assembly
  • incorrect set-up
  
  

Many of the airworthiness issues can be discovered during a pre-flight check and rectified prior to flight.

As has been said before, it's worth wiping the helis down before they are put back into storage. I do all of my helis whether or not they are nitros.

OK I'll be the first to admit that I am a tad anal in my set up and many have said "we just want to get out and fly!". This is fine - provided you don't mind paying the cost associated with any of the airworthiness factors that contribute to your crashes.