Newsgroups: rec.models.rc
Subject: Re: R/C Glider crashing!
From: mken1@cs.aukuni.ac.nz (Mark Steven         Kendall        )
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 21:45:10 GMT
Organization: Computer Science Dept. University of Auckland

I've had all sorts of crashes while learning how to fly, and after I learnt
how to as well!  One of my luckiest crashes was just after I felt confident to
fly solo, it was a windy day and a couple of us had launched to quite a good
height (a bungee (histart ?) is really good in high winds) and I was geting an
amazingingly long flight, the only problem was that my glider is designed for
thermal soaring for beginners, and without heaps of weight added into it it has
very little penetration in high winds.  This soon became apparent when I 
stopped playing around and tried to come back after floating a LONG way down
wind, I had plenty of height but just could not come foward eventually I gave
up and just concentrated on landing it, which became increasingly diffcult as
it got lower and finally dissapeared behind a hill in the distance, nothing you
can do here except pull full up and hope for the best.  Eventually I finished
packing up and off we went to look for it, we found the glider nose down,
buried all the way up to the wings in mud amongst mangrove trees, I was lucky
that the tide was out at the time.  The only damage done was one muddy plane
and radio gear that needed drying out.

A really neat looking crash that happened one day occurred when an elderly
gentleman lost sight of his glider and it went into a vertical dive.  A friend
of mine yelled for him to pull up but was not heard, so he sprinted over to the
guy, yanked the control off him and just pulled up.  Talk about lucky, this
plane just leveled out inches off the ground (no kidding) but unfortunatly the
plane couldn't handle the gees, it was really moving, and one of the front
wings blew off taking half the tailplane with it, and luck still being with
this guy, because it was so close to the ground all that happened was that half
the plane tilted up and it slid to halt with no further damage.

For those of use that fly off bungees and winches you've probably seen what
happens when there is too much force for the plane to handle (ie high wind or
too much tension on the winch).  One day a whole lot of people from a local
nightclass group were down flying their new gliders, when all of sudden there
was this little cracking noise, followed by a whistling them a loud thud. The
poor fellow walked over to the remains of the fuselage as the wings fluttered
down and picked up the pieces.  Not to be outdown the rest of the group decided
to keep on flying, not realising that their gliders couldn't handle these
conditions.  One after another they fell out of the sky on the launch, some
still with the wings attached but folded, others with half wings (one guy
attempted a landing with only 3/4 of a wing, but didn't quite make it - I know
how hard this is as I've done it myself).  The same day as this I got quite a
bad scare with my glider on the launch, it decided that it would do sea-gull
impersonations and flap its wings a hell of a lot, I thought it was going to
fall to bits there and then.  This doesn't bother me any more but it's good to
watch the expression on an experienced pilots face when you go into a dive to
pick some speed up for loops etc and the wings start to really flap!

By the way for those that find that the bungee hasn't released it is possible
to land with it still attached, I've done this many a time, mainly when I'm
doing stupid things and it wraps around the wing on release.  Just fly tight
circles, you can increase these as you get lower, and watch out for a stall as
this can be disastrous with a line still attached.

I went flying a month or so ago with my new slope sloarer, its 3 years old and
has flown 2-3 times, I'm not use to ailerons or slope sloaring really and
managed to plough it into the hill I was flying off - I think I'll stick to
kayaking for the rest of the year because I don't fell up to fixing it before
winters over.

Mark Kendall
Auckland University, NZ.