crashed the Lazy Ace

Well, I finally got my county flying permit and took my brand new Lazy Ace to the field this evening. (Remember the photos I showed you guys a month ago?)

Range check and control functions were good so I took off, but about the time I got the plane trimmed for level flight I lost control. I looked down at my transmitter and the battery was dead. The plane was at full throttle in a slight bank which turned into a spin by the time it hit. The front end of the fuselage is shattered, but the tail is perfect.

The plane flew like a dream for about three minutes. I'm glad I got to enjoy it for a little while. Stupid battery. I should have cycled it a couple of times to make sure it was still good.

I'll probably just strip it and give it to a friend who is famous for rebuilding other people's wrecks. I like building but I hate rebuilding. Not only that, but as soon as the house sells we're moving, and I just can't justify hauling a 6 foot biplane with the rest of our household, especially a broken one. I'm glad I took a picture of it before it crashed.

Thanks for the compliment. That was one of the prettier planes I've built over the past 15 years. I could just imagine the beauty of it landing on a still evening at about 10 mph, which was what I was just about to do with it when the disaster struck....

Well, sometimes that's the way the cookie crumbles. The good news is that the Royal Coachman is just about done. All it needs is pushrods. I told my kids we'd take another whack at flying tomorrow evening. The Coachman has turned out to be a really nice looking little plane. I built it with a tailwheel, four control functions, and an OS 15 FP. I covered it with three colors of monokote that I had little scraps of, which was just barely enough to get the job done, and it looks great. I'll post photos of it tomorrow in case anybody is interested in seeing this little gem. I'd really like to see anybody else's plans-built projects, if any of you guys have photos.

I'm sure I'll build another Lazy Ace or Big John when the family gets settled, after we move down to the Ozarks. That little taste this evening was just enough to give me Big Biplane Disease again. I built this one to teach the kids to fly, but I guess we'll have to go back to the little stuff for now.

I live in Kansas City. The county owns a couple of large parks, which is where most of the RC flying has been done since RC flying started decades ago. These have evolved into excellent RC sites with improved runways, shelters, starting stands, etc. All you need is a county permit for $15 per calendar year, which is available to anybody with liability insurance. Better yet, a friend of mine even got the bureaucrats to understand that our primary coverage has always been the standard $300,000 homeowners insurance liability clause, so we are now able to get our permits without an AMA card.

On Wed, 16 May 2007 23:15:31 -0600, Robert Reynolds wrote in :

Yup.

CONDOLENCES and deepest sympathy.

I've crashed a lot in my life, and I've had to cope with the grief as best I can. Still, I built my planes to fly, not crash, and flying successfully is a LOT more fun that picking up pieces and starting over.

This is a couple of years and a couple of crashes out of date, but it shows that I know how you feel.

in :

Those are some very touching photos, but the thing that made the biggest impression on me was the cold weather pictures. You guys are crazy to fly in that kind of weather!