heli crash lounge...

[backwoodsRC]

ok this post is for all of us that fly,,,, but not so good... yea.. cruising the house today with my mini... got caught up in ceiling fan updraft... or CFUD..lol

yea i know... last week seen a vid of a mini crash in a dogs water dish.... so whats the best heli crash story you got..

[helibrian]

hehe....CFUD.....? is that the sound it made as well?

Sorry...funny...
well I've got a million crash stories but none of them could be described as "the best" or anything else that implies goodness of any kind.
One evening after work a friend and I, thought it would be fun to hang out in the machine shop and fly the helis around. You know, try to fly between the roof trusses and all that stuff. Well we found some bottle rockets he had in his truck, left over from 4th of July, and decided to tape a bunch of straws to the skids and launch some rockets! WHOOSH! BANG! WHOOSH! BANG! It was going great till the heli, at one point, was aimed across the shop at the boss' grandson's brand new supercharged Cobra/Mustang, that he was storing there for a couple of days. WHOOSH! OH.....OH....OH...$H!+!!! Let me just say, those car covers are not the least bit flame retardant!
needless to say the heli crashed as we stood there mesmerized.

[jrwoodchuck]

I kept all of broken blades from my crashes, but about 8 years ago I hit 100 sets of broken blades, I then stopped counting. I started flying in the days that you had to build, balance and CG your blades. It wasn't until the mid 90's that you could buy "bolt on blades".

[backwoodsRC]

both were good... or bad?? any ways i liked um..lol just got to playing with my blade cp.. so ill have another in a day or so..lol and yes that is also the sound it made...roflmao..

[Stone D]

Originally Posted by helibrian

hehe....CFUD.....? is that the sound it made as well?

Sorry...funny...
well I've got a million crash stories but none of them could be described as "the best" or anything else that implies goodness of any kind.
One evening after work a friend and I, thought it would be fun to hang out in the machine shop and fly the helis around. You know, try to fly between the roof trusses and all that stuff. Well we found some bottle rockets he had in his truck, left over from 4th of July, and decided to tape a bunch of straws to the skids and launch some rockets! WHOOSH! BANG! WHOOSH! BANG! It was going great till the heli, at one point, was aimed across the shop at the boss' grandson's brand new supercharged Cobra/Mustang, that he was storing there for a couple of days. WHOOSH! OH.....OH....OH...$H!+!!! Let me just say, those car covers are not the least bit flame retardant!
needless to say the heli crashed as we stood there mesmerized.

Though I hate to laugh at misfortune, that story is friggin hilarious.

I don't have any good crash stories, just good crashes. My first heli was a Picco Z (quit laughing) that wound up in a bowl of water in the kitchen sink.

Come to think of it, it also made that cfud noise...

And then just the usual crashes. And I don't understand why everyone seems to down the Blade CP so much on here. It crashes just fine.

[OTE_TheMissile]

Truck guy here, needed some morning amusement and saw the thread topic...sorry...

First of all lemme say I have the utmost respect for R/C pilots, I cannot comprehend how you guys do this with ANY hope of not crashing. I played a lot of Microsoft Flight Simulator when I was younger and even landing an airplane when you're looking out the windshield was a task. Trying to do it with a sensitive little R/C plane standing next to the runway, I just don't see how it's possible. And helicopters, R/C stunt heli guys just blow me away. My LHS owner is a heli guy and he drives me nuts on the RealFlight demo he has in the shop.

So this is by no means a flame post, more of a respectful bow down

But I do have an honorable mention: this was years ago when I only had a few seasons of R/C offroad racing under my belt, never thought about touching airplanes or helis. Walked into a hobby shop that had a RealFlight demo set up and noticed there was a little heli buzzing away on the screen. It looked like a pretty basic model, complete with the "training balls" or w/e they're called on the skids. I knew what each stick on the radio did, but I'll bet I spent ten minutes flipping all the other switches and levers to see what they did before I took a swing at getting the copter airborne. So I finally feel confident enough to slowly give it some gas and get off the ground...

Long story short, it went about 6' straight up followed by 6'1" straight down. Pretty much decided at that point it'd be cheaper for me to stick with cars

Then about a year ago I saw the Air Hogs Havoc on sale at Wal-Mart for $40, got a good 3 months of strafing the guys on pit road at the track and terrifying the cats at home out of it before the battery in the heli stopped taking a charge, but $40 well spent. If what, like $120 falls out of the sky sometime soon, I'd consider spending it on something a little more hobby-grade. But for right now I'd settle for the LHS owner putting RealRace on the shop PC, just to take the wind out of his sails once in awhile

[RaZz0R]

Hehehehe kinda true - I am a 3D Helicopter RC pilot. Think of it like this.. anything that has to screw it way in to the air does not fly naturally. Unlike planes - Heli's do not glide

Flew 3 lipo packs today..... While the twister storm 3d stock servos are a little better then the blades.. not that they are much better when doing 3D like I found out today - was ripping it up doing tic-toc's both front to back & side to side - pulled a double back flip & when I went to level out - a servo stripped & had it roll in to the ground

First two packs were awesome tho learnt a few new tricks from the sim to the real thing.

Crash damage is new shafts (Main & tail), feathering shaft, new main blades & I am going new servos all round as well so I don't have this problem again.

Also picked up a HG5000 gyro & servo pack - so that’s going on as well. I am more glad it was a servo & not my flying that caused the crash. total crash damage is about 90 bucks - 60 of which is new main rotor blades.
Was it worth it - having my mates & others look one for the first two packs while I flipped sideways, back, front, rolls, inverted flight & spins.. hell yes! This is a recent video from 5 days ago - when I fly like this its all so, so worth it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wyu8oScjWDs

[Mooshu Beef]

Razzor I'm still very impresed with the flight. I'm hoping to eventually get into Helis once I have a stable job... right now I'm probably looking into an mCX and a flight sim.

Right now i have a cheap 3 channel coaxial that has forward and reverse motion from a horizontal tail rotor that tilts the heli. It's okay since it's the only thing I have, and it's teaching me orientation and the feel of the stick. Crashes galore, but because of bail outs due to the delay in control based off the design of the heli.

[rc-mike]

I guess my best (or worst rather) was when I was flying my Raptor 90 and completely lost the right stick. I had throttle/collective and rudder and that was it! It was trimmed to where it would go backwards slowly but it had to keep messing with it to keep it from tilting to far and crashing. Apparently I got the stick back and was holding full back collective and it pitched up violently and had a mid air boomstrike. It was over the woods and pieces rained down all over the place. A friend and I went into the woods to find what we could and it was scattered in probably a 50 ft. circle. We found everything but the tail servo. Well, we found the mounting lugs since they were still attached to the heli. The engine was destroyed since it ran at full throttle until the rod let go. It cost a lot to fix it but I eventually did. Oh, and the reason that I lost control was there was a small washer that was floating around inside the transmitter and shorted out something.

[dhc8guru]

I piled my Vibe 50 in over the weekend...$150 in damage.

I am a quick learner and after 4 years of flying, the best I can do is some loops, rolls, nose in hover etc... Granted, I taught myself through trial and error everything from Heli setup to the actual flying. It makes me wonder what percentage of the RC Heli public can do hardcore 3D? I thought after a couple of years I would be tossing heli's around like a pro..but that never happened. Now I just resided to just enjoying what few maneuvers I know and giving up on learning 3D.

[Nickd18]

Originally Posted by helibrian

hehe....CFUD.....? is that the sound it made as well?

Sorry...funny...
well I've got a million crash stories but none of them could be described as "the best" or anything else that implies goodness of any kind.
One evening after work a friend and I, thought it would be fun to hang out in the machine shop and fly the helis around. You know, try to fly between the roof trusses and all that stuff. Well we found some bottle rockets he had in his truck, left over from 4th of July, and decided to tape a bunch of straws to the skids and launch some rockets! WHOOSH! BANG! WHOOSH! BANG! It was going great till the heli, at one point, was aimed across the shop at the boss' grandson's brand new supercharged Cobra/Mustang, that he was storing there for a couple of days. WHOOSH! OH.....OH....OH...$H!+!!! Let me just say, those car covers are not the least bit flame retardant!
needless to say the heli crashed as we stood there mesmerized.

i have to say that would have been priceless! that is by far the baest heli story ever..

[interplanet]

Originally Posted by dhc8guru

Now I just resided to just enjoying what few maneuvers I know and giving up on learning 3D.

you need a capable heli, and mst importantly a good heli sim, aerofly is reat for helis in my opionon.

[Espeefan]

I'm still really new to RC helis, but I have had some good flights, but also one crash. I started last year, in summer, about this time. I managed about 18 flights, of mostly hovering, till I tried some forward flight, which went fine, and then brought my heli into a side-in hover. At that point, my brain just locked up, even though I had done much side-in hovering on the sim, and my fingers should have known what to do. Anyway, the heli started drifting to the side, and backwards, and I just sat there and watched it go in, tail first! I think I was trying to figure out how to level it out, to stop the sideways, not really concerned about the backwards drift, and in she went! It made a great crack, and luckily the crash was light enough that I only wrecked the torque tube and shaft, a main shaft bearing, all the blades, and I stripped out a couple servos. I was up and flying again, within a week, including order, and waiting for parts to show up. I learned that day, to push one's self to try new things, but to take baby steps. I should have done more side-in hovering, before attempting any forward flight. I hadn't done enough to be completely comfortable with it.

When I think about it, I could have done any number of things to save the heli. I could have swung the tail around to fly tail-in, and level out the heli, with which I was very comfortable with flying in, I could have punched the collective to get some altitude (for more thinking time), or I could have just transitioned back to forward flight, but when you are in that situation, and you realize you might be crashing, you really freeze up.

Anyway, she wasn't to bad. Here are some pics. The worst part of the crash - I was instantly out $100 for main blades. Probably shouldn't have been using the nice carbon fiber ones. But they were factory balanced, and held together, which really does make them safer, if not more expensive.









When you get the first crash out of the way, flying gets easier. You don't have to worry about crashing, once you've already done it.

[GundamWZero]

I just can't do 3D....scale is where the "oooh and ahhh" is at.

I have three crashes under my belt:

First time, the heli caught me by surprise when it lifted off, so I dropped the collective quickly......broke the main blades, landing struts, and bent the shaft.

Second time, after doing some stable, low level hovering, decided to have my wife record my next flight. Got it about 13ft into the air and began forward flight. As the bird banked into a turn, I forgot the golden rule for helicopters;
any banking manuvers requires power and pitch. Heli plowed into the ground.

Third time was with my micro helicopter; flying in my garage (wind was too strong) when the heli moved too close to the wall. Learning from the previous crash, I applied tail rudder. Well since the heli was too close to the wall, well you can pretty much figure out what happened next.

So, for the sound effects, it was:

1st flight: Thud

2nd flight: Thud

3rd flight: a dog running running on a no-wax floor. (skeech, skeech, sound)

I bought two Co-Pilots for my big birds....yet to get my Shogun V2 off the ground.

[rgsuperstart]

Reading this thread brings back lots of laughter! I dont recall any amazing crashes, however, I do remember most of them were preceded by the words "Hey honey check this out". Because it never failed, I would learn a trick, do it 20 times, then go get the wife. She would watch as I plunged the heli into a tree, rooftop, and whatever else was around my "free from obstructions" airspace! So according to her, the only trick I knew, was the ability to prove to her why I spent so much money on the rc helicopter. It wasnt meant to be deceptive! And I agree with the above post, I like the realistic stuff as well more than the 3d.