any Thoughts on Crash Please

I flew my new plane today, had 3 awesome flights before it crashed. Luckily very little damage. The plane is my own design and has some slight changes from previous builds of my base design. I actually think the small design tweaks were good. But the creash was weird. The plane is very light. It is 2.5mm balsa all through. the wingspan is 38cm/15 inches and the chord is 13cm/5 1/2 inches. The fuse is also 13cm/5 1/2 inches to the foward eadge of the elevator. the elevator is 350mm/1 1/2 inches by 180mm/ 7 inches. the engine is a surestart crankcase, Grey horseseshoe backplate with helicopter mount and rubber band mounting. The engine uses a Killer bee crank, TD cyclinder, standard cox glow head. No pressure. It launches from a launch table with a rear stooge and has a single drop off wheel. I was using 35 foot dacron. 10lb fishing line. I know the plane isnt a fancy built up wing stunter or such, but I can build it out of 1 sheet of 2.5mm balsa and I reckon its more capable then me. Lol. So its quick, cheap, easy, to build, launches easy on my own with dropoff wheel. so pretty much works for what Im after.



It flew with great line tension even though it was quite windy. The engine power seems to match the plane quite well. It certainly goes where I point it and does it quickly but it is not wildly twitchy. It is easy to control, but does what you tell it. but not that horrible twitchy where the plane starts hunting/flutter in gusty windy conditions. I had managed my normal loops, wingovers, and some lazy eights, and was really pleased with how well I could steer it in a wingover by feeding both down and up to it, as I just wanted to see what it could/might be able to do. i was starting to think it might have enough line tension and controil to try going invered from a wingover. But, then I crashed it. Lol. Weird crash, yes, I did lots of things I shouldnt have, but when Im in the groove and just having a blast I sometimes forget to think as to where the wind might be. I did or started a loop with the wind coming at me, so it would be wanting to lift the planes outer wingtip and push it back at me. I had done this several times earlier and gotten away with it. Maybe this time the plane was going slower, as I did this loop after a series of loops and wingovers with no flat laps inbetween, so speed may have been down a bit. Anyway this time it did lift the wing right up, pushed the plane way back at me and as it went over the top it rolled the plane over, pointed its nose down and did several sort of rolling spinning flops straight at the ground, miraculously it did not cut the lines in the prop or tangle them in the plane. about 3/4 way down I got enough input back even with slack lines to get it level and nose more toward level before it crashed, so I was quite lucky that there is almost zero damage. But, I did not install the nylon elevator hinges the way @Ken Cook had explained and recommended to do, in great detail. Basically I was in a hurry, to fly, I had 5 minute epoxy, and thought, yep that will see me fly in the morning. In the photo of the plane you can see the front half of one of the elevator hinges has broken off.

My question which maybe can never be answered for sure, or maybe some of you have had enough of these things happen to know. did the hinge break away when the plane crashed or did it break away in the air and that is what caused the wild loss of control. Because until that moment it had flown fautlessly in those conditions and I had looped with the wrong side cross wind several times. It did come back at me as expected, but no wild loss of control. I would like to think the hinge broke away in the air. lol, but I suspect it was some bad flying and when it crashed the forces run to the back of the plane and popped the hinge. I dont like flying planes with very much weight at all on the outer wing. Its probably just a bad habbit from my youth when we didnt even know of such things. I have also sometimes found that too much weight on the outer wing makes the plane harder to fly in windy conditions as it, I think the term is Hinges with a lot of force and up and down motion of the wing in cross winds, and I would prefer the plane to come back at me than do that. As I find generally when it comes back at me, it will fly out of it, and even though the lines are slack you actually still have quite a lot of elevator control. So, I tend to use very little outer wing weight, Maybe the lesson is, dont do those type of maneuveres with the wind coming the way it was and reasonably strong and gusty which is worse. I know, or believe you should do these things down wind, but sometimes I get enthusiatic and forget. Lol. A friend of mine keeps telling me I would have less problem with that sort of thing if I flew my old Dominator and Liquidator wings rather than Half-A. But i like Half-A.


Yabby