This Avante V2 is an 80mm EDF foam jet, and when everything is right it is exactly the sort of model that makes a field day: spool up, launch, and it climbs away on a 6s pack. Its maiden flight did not stay that way for long.
The airframe carries onboard wiring, a receiver, yellow connectors and a battery compartment, with the strap over the bay labelled Freewing. The 6s lithium polymer pack was tied down with velcro inside the airframe, and a RadioMaster TX16S sat on the grass for the flight. A charger was used beforehand, and a friend checked the pack before takeoff and found the voltage high. It read 27 volts on the 6s pack against 26 volts when it came off the charger. The friend called the reading fine, and the takeoff went ahead anyway.
Mid-flight the pack went into thermal runaway, pushing thick white smoke out of the open cockpit. The friend flew the burning jet down to a fairly soft landing. Once on the ground someone pulled the smoking battery free and threw it onto the grass, and the ESC's BEC had kept the system powered right up until the pack was unplugged. The ejected pack kept burning and venting dense smoke on the grass. Inside, the cockpit foam and intake area are charred and melted, and the red nose section tore away from the aircraft.
To the maker's credit, the airframe is salvageable rather than a write-off, and both people walked away unhurt, though the maker admits panic during a first lipo fire made their handling poor. The open question is the charger: the friend says it never stopped once the pack was full, yet the maker insists the charger is good and cannot explain how the overcharge happened. Current work is judging whether the melted foam and broken nose cone can be glued back together.