crashes? modles v light aircraft

Because its only a loss to youir pocket, and most eejits who fly toy planes haven't a clue aboiut even basic aerodynamics.

They are here to have fun, anyway, not fly an impeccable safety record.

I never questioned it...I just sit back and enjoy it.

The Natural Philosopher wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@ersa.uk.clara.net:

Most clubs have procedures during takeoffs and landings, to provide orderliness, moderate air traffic and prevent ground and mid-airs. If a public park, there usually is not as much moderation, short of a gross violation you have all types there.

Crashing, I don't mind as long as no one gets hurt. As you say, there are eejits out there who could care less about other flyers.

Years ago I was at the Whittier Narrows Recreation Area in the LA area. After being treated rudely by one of the patrons, it was the last time I flew there.

You have a pretty good point. It does seem that if a modeler has progressed to large scale planes he/she would know bettter! However, flying an RC plane is an almost entirely visual experience. In a real plane, you have other senses and instruments to warn you when something's going wrong. Our RC planes are also way overpowered compared to their full scale counterparts, and often this instills a false sense of security in modeler's minds. Also, as Natural Philosopher said, you don't wind up dead when you do something stupid and crash your model.

One thing that is lacking in instruction at most fields is how to get out of trouble. I've lost my share of models to "death spirals". Another one is trying to steer with ailerons when you're low and slow. I know better now, but it was an expensive learning curve.

Morris

A departure stall with a man-carrying aircraft results in property damage and injury or death to one or more people. The Feds seem to think that people dying is a bad thing, so if you want to be an airplane driver you have to take all those classes, &c, _and_ the Feds want to come and ask embarrasing questions about each and every incident that seems even hint of an accident.

A departure stall with a model aircraft won't, in many cases, even be blamed on the pilot! The worst that happens is that the guy running the sticks is out of pocket by a few hundred dollars. So as long as you don't have little kids running around downrange of the aircraft no one cares if you crash the things.

I don't fly full-scale airplanes but I've scratched up some of the ground-school books (and read them), I've talked to my pilot friends about correct procedures, and I've read the material written by modellers who are interested in not crashing. As a result I preflight my aircraft before I fly, I postflight it when I land, I plan the flight before I start the engine and my planes last for years. Not that I don't re-kit a model from time to time -- I'm not as thorough about all this as I would be with a real aircraft, and sometimes I'm just stupid

-- but I do better than some.

------------------------------------------- Tim Wescott Wescott Design Services

Pilot at this hobby .Not necessarily true with 1:1 scale. Every flight for me is a learning process.

Flying is a tug of war with gravity.

Because not doing so doesn't (as a rule) kill people or cost tens of thousands of dollars in damage.

I won't quote the whole post, but Marty makes some excellent points.

I would like to add a couple of thoughts,

1: One of the reasons that we tend to see some of the large scale model crashes seems to me to be that many people don't fly them often enough to get really competent and comfortable with them. The guys that fly a LOT and usually fly the big models tend to be pretty competent. The guys that don't fly much, and rarely fly the bigger planes tend to not do so well with them.

2: some of the best builders are among the worst flyers, and vice-versa.

3: SOME guys have more money than sense, I have personally witnessed a guy come to the field with a BIG trailer full of big expensive planes, and get pretty much one flight (or attempted flight) per plane and leave with a trailer full of scrap.

...and the gravity never gets tired, runs out of gas, or stalls.

And some of those requires instruments to be able to follow the rules,...which we done have,..as you mentioned in #4.

The best three pieces of advice I have gotten on flying aircraft:

1: Always plan your flight. Before the model leaves your hand you should have a clear notion of what you're going to do in the first circuit of the field. 2: Fly 10 dumb-thumbs high. That gives you 10 chances to do things right before you hit the ground. A corellary to this, which resulted in my most recent crash, is to fly _very_ conservatively when you're in trouble. I was flying with my kid, who was on the buddy box. The buddy box has an invert switch, which he was playing with before the flight. He forgot to change it, I was yelling "pull back the stick! pull back the stick!". Then (very stupid) instead of taking control I reached over and pulled the @#$% stick back myself. I did recover well enough to have a repairable airplane, but still... 3: From a full-scale, former military pilot: You need three things to be comfortable: Airspeed, altitude and ideas. If you run out of any one of these things then you can use some of the other two to buy some of the one. This not only accounts for rules 1 (ideas) and 2 (altitude), but it also explains why you should be extra careful on takeoff and landing (you'll be short on both altitude and airspeed, so you'd better have some good ideas).

On Fri, 1 Jul 2005 13:24:50 -0500, "Phillip Windell" wrote in :

I should have added that we RC pilots can learn a lot from full-scale wisdom.

I read "Stick and Rudder" by Wolfgang Langewiesche, even though it is ancient. That was part of my long campaign to grasp what an "accelerated stall" is.

A friend of mine totalled his full-scale Aeronca after an engine failure shortly after takeoff. He was watching his airspeed but forgot that the stall speed goes up in a turn. I'm not saying that he or the airframe would have come out better if he hadn't stalled and spun in, but in the stress of the moment he forgot how much airspeed he really needed in the turn.

Marty

Shux, If I went 10 high I wouldn't be able to SEE the plane ;-(

Because R/C pilots walk to the crash site where as full scale pilots sometimes walk away from the crash site.

Hugh done both.

Did he survive it?

On Tue, 5 Jul 2005 12:00:24 -0500, "Phillip Windell" wrote in :

Yes. That's how I know he was watching his air speed indicator in the last turn. He thought he was 1 knot above stall speed, but forgot that the number is higher in a bank.

Marty

Well, that's good anyway.

That isn't much margin even in a straight line. If the calibration of the gauge could have been a little off and he could have been 3 knots underspeed inspite of the guage and he would still have been screwed whether straight line or turning. I think I'd always shoot for 10 knots over what was needed no matter what,..at least until just before touchdown.

I'm not sure "nothing" is a fair assessment, because assuming a constant speed, AOA will increase in a coordinated turn.