Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Another suble reminder

I decided I wanted to either fly my kite or my model airplane this morning before it got hot. I loaded both up in the car and headed to a nice big park near our house in Orem. I have seen others flying airplanes there and it has a big walking track that you can take off and land on, so I knew I was safe either way. After winding through construction, I made it to the park and found relatively few people and little wind.
I pulled The Revenge (my airplane) out of the car and set it up and filled it with nitromethane gas. I started the plane and began to taxi for takeoff. There were a few people on the track, so I thought I'd try a grass takeoff first. The plane just didn't have big enough wheels or engine to get off the ground on the grass. It would go fast on the short dry grass, then get stopped in the longer wet grass.
I switched over to the paved walking path, waited for the four moms with strollers (one from my ward) to get well out of the way, then let her rip. Takeoff was picture perfect and the plane flew like a champ. I did loops and figure eights and barrel rolls. I even did an inverted loop. Then I throttled back to half and flew it a little more gentle for a bit. I tried to rev back up, but the engine was running too richly, so it wouldn't get back to high rpm. It was flying fine at half throttle though, so I wasn't worried.
After about ten minutes I decided it was time to prepare for landing. I made a few landing passes while I waited for the walking mothers to pass again. I brought the plane down lower and brought the throttle back to 25%. I was just making my final approach for landing at the far end of the field when I thought I saw the plane's shadow cross a tree (or pole, don't remember which). This typically signals that you are fairly close to the object. A second later the plane tumbled out of control as it hit a telephone wire. For a minute, I thought I might even be able to recover, but then it plummeted to the asphalt street below. I ran over to the plane and picked up some of the pieces. I'd say the crash was less severe than it could have been, but the plane sustained damage to the left wing (I broke the right wing the first time I flew the plane), nosecone (spinner and bulkhead both broke), and firewall/engine mount. It is repairable, but this is just another subtle reminder to
NEVER EVER FLY YOUR PLANE IN A CITY PARK OR NEAR TELEPHONE WIRES! THEY EAT AIRPLANES!

3 comments:

Danny McMillan said...

Dang! Coulda been worse, though. I'm paranoid to fly out here because I'm worried I'll lose radio contact, the plane will fly into some residential neighborhood, and knock out a busload of school kids. Good luck with the repair. Dang.

Katie said...

Darn--that looks so sad! Hope you can get it fixed. Hey, at least you've got time on your hands! What's the update on the jobs? Did they extend your deadline?

Katie said...

Oh Dan! So sad. I had the same thing happen once when we flew my uncle's plan at Rock Canyon Elementary school in Provo - all was going great until the landing when we misjudged and landed it right into a swingset - shattered both wings on impact and took 6 months to rebuild the plane.

Good times :-)

mb