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How lucky was I?
After being out most of the day, got home to a nice (fairly) windless evening. Decided that as I had a nice load of 3S packs already charged in the garage, I'd get out with my Trex 450 Pro and Parkzone Spitfire (just recently upgraded to a nice brushless system - 80+ mph 
)
Had the first few flights with the Spitfire. Man, that thing shifts - vertical climbs, loops, rolls - great fun. All using one of the cheapo Orange Rx (yes, running in DSM2 mode with my DX8, despite not yet having had the "upgrade"). I have to say, that Rx has a truly remarkable range.
Then got the 450 out. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.... Plugged the first battery in. All cyclic servos twitched like mad. Weird. Unplugged the pack, then replugged and everything went fine. Drained the first pack with some nice circuits, a couple of inverted hovers then some nice gently flying. After a couple of mins, I went into another inverted hover on Idle2 (running @ 100 throttle). Had to give it max negative pitch and was still coming down - it was like I was on Normal mode and throttle was set to zero at 0 stick. But definitely in Idle2 still. Decided it was the pack (an old battery) getting to the end so brought her in for a new one.
Put one of my new Nano 2200 packs in it, and one thing this does not lack is power. Got straight back into Idle 2, did some nice loops, rolls, inverted fly bys. Then went into an inverted over and same thing happened - and this was only 2 mins into the flight. Despite max negative pitch, she still came down and it was like the motor was seriously bogging or cutting out.
Anyway, did not have enough altitude to recover. Down she came straight into a wheat field, still inverted.
I hit TH about 3 metres from the top of the crops. Had to run 100 metres across to the field. Finding her was a little tricky! Thank God for beeping ESC's. Luckily, I was able to use that as a homing beacon and eventually find her.
Absolutely no damage! Wow, that was lucky.
Plugged battery in to try and initialise her, but nothing happening.
Got the Pro home and tested everything. 2 servos dead on the cyclic, everything else fine. These were the stock DS410M items. I'm guessing that the failures shut the throttle channel down and hence had no power to recover.
Anyway, long story short, figure a pretty amazing escape compared to what the cost might have been. Also, is a welcome reminder why I always try to fly in totally remote places incase of unexpected failures in flight.
)Had the first few flights with the Spitfire. Man, that thing shifts - vertical climbs, loops, rolls - great fun. All using one of the cheapo Orange Rx (yes, running in DSM2 mode with my DX8, despite not yet having had the "upgrade"). I have to say, that Rx has a truly remarkable range.
Then got the 450 out. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.... Plugged the first battery in. All cyclic servos twitched like mad. Weird. Unplugged the pack, then replugged and everything went fine. Drained the first pack with some nice circuits, a couple of inverted hovers then some nice gently flying. After a couple of mins, I went into another inverted hover on Idle2 (running @ 100 throttle). Had to give it max negative pitch and was still coming down - it was like I was on Normal mode and throttle was set to zero at 0 stick. But definitely in Idle2 still. Decided it was the pack (an old battery) getting to the end so brought her in for a new one.
Put one of my new Nano 2200 packs in it, and one thing this does not lack is power. Got straight back into Idle 2, did some nice loops, rolls, inverted fly bys. Then went into an inverted over and same thing happened - and this was only 2 mins into the flight. Despite max negative pitch, she still came down and it was like the motor was seriously bogging or cutting out.
Anyway, did not have enough altitude to recover. Down she came straight into a wheat field, still inverted.
I hit TH about 3 metres from the top of the crops. Had to run 100 metres across to the field. Finding her was a little tricky! Thank God for beeping ESC's. Luckily, I was able to use that as a homing beacon and eventually find her.
Absolutely no damage! Wow, that was lucky.
Plugged battery in to try and initialise her, but nothing happening.
Got the Pro home and tested everything. 2 servos dead on the cyclic, everything else fine. These were the stock DS410M items. I'm guessing that the failures shut the throttle channel down and hence had no power to recover.
Anyway, long story short, figure a pretty amazing escape compared to what the cost might have been. Also, is a welcome reminder why I always try to fly in totally remote places incase of unexpected failures in flight.
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