Friday, February 6, 2009

Aviation Mishaps

Well, I finally "crashed" my remote control airplane. It was really just a hard landing. I was flying around like normal and knew my battery was getting low. The airplane is smart enough to cut the engine and save power for the flight controls once the battery gets low so you can still make a controlled landing. I was flying downwind, toward myself, and too low to circle around to scrub speed when the battery quit. Running pretty fast, with the wind, and toward the obstacles behind me all combined to a landing I didn't want to make. Usually I take a pretty long approach and can set it down ridiculously gently. Anyway, I set it down in the lumpy and patchy ice and snow before the plane could hit the big log. Doing so caused the landing gear to rip off, which isn't a big deal, but they took half of the battery mount with them, breaking it in half. I felt kind of bad about that, but a little superglue to get the piece back together and a little duct tape to contain the cracks in the battery door, and it's all set to fly again.

It was kind of like the airplane that crashed in the Hudson River a couple weeks ago. I just wasn't going to make it to an airport and had to set it down where I could.




Recently, my airplane was mistaken for a snowy owl by my friends/coworkers/neighbors. There it was, white and flying low to the ground. It would be quite a sight to see one, so I can understand the excitement. Apparently they realized it wasn't an owl right about the time I picked it up.




Work continues on my painting. The fumes are killing me in this enclosed space.

3 comments:

Bruce Oksol said...

If your radio-controlled airplane had sustained a birdstrike, however, it probably would have taken a bit more than some super glue and duct tape to get it flight worthy again. Funny story. Thanks for posting.

Anonymous said...

did I ever describe how I would climb to the garage roof, used the crashed balsa wood and paper covered planes, set them afire and launch off for a final flaming end?

the old tbirddriver

Nathan King said...

Anything I have ever put into the sky has further proven the property of entropy, whether it was a balsa airplane, model rocket, or eventually my r/c airplane. I nearly had a fatal wipeout later in the day when the wind picked up unexpectedly.

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