OMG You did what?

[Jungle Bob]

Some excellent howlers there guys! I was reading back and saw an entry from the main man...Bob Finless....we are honoured Bob that you had the balls to contribute to this admission therapy....my respect for you just grows and grows! I am in my infancy in learning to fly and having someone with your abilities 'fessing' up to your mistakes makes me feel heaps better. The errant crystal is exactly the sort of thing I think could help newcomers to this wonderful sport as was the default futaba settings..great stuff. My next 'howler'.......I think we have all done this..carrying our heli and our tx and trying to open a door! Do I need to go on? I will,just for the enjoyment factor.....yep...obvious solution....tuck the tx under your arm..right??!?! Accidently apply throttle in the 'underarm' position and the heli tries to do its thing...result...one heli writhing and thrashing around like an Iraqi
dictator on the end of rope!

[SteveL]

Well the crystal thing really hit home. Me and two buddies were out for an evening flight (BTW if they are reading this they are already laughing) and both of them crash. I can’t remember the exact reason but it is suffice to say they warned me there was something in the air. I proceeded to tell and show them I was not superstitious. About 45sec into the flight I flipped her (my trex that seems to like the ground better than the air) inverted for a little hovering practice. One of my friends notices something falling off. You guessed it. My crystal fell out. I start yelling I don’t have it and boom. After repairing the little rex, I go out to our normal field to track the blades (anyone with a rex will know this is a PIA) I finally get them tracked and all of a sudden (BANG) dirt nap.

Moral of the story
1) don’t drink and reassemble heli (You might forget something) I forgot to tape the crystal in.
2) T-Rexs have in inherent fear of heights and will do anything to avoid being off the ground.

:arggg:

[eeeyal]

What’s up guys? Last week I went to the local soccer field to fly my Trex 450 SE after work (around 7 insh). The heli was setup with carbon main blades, carbon paddles, tail blades, boom, and a look-alike carbon canopy. Really well flying machine and sharp looking too. Anyway, the soccer field has trees in the distance. It was getting dark and my heli was black. Guess what happened next :roll: I was pirouetting along inverted about 50’ up when I lost the heli. I froze and started to frantically scan the sky hoping I would locate it, no such luck. The heli went in HARD inverted with idle up.

Damage report: Heli was destroyed. All carbon parts exploded on impact stripped the gears in all the CCPM servos Fly bar took out my 401 gyro.

Moral of the story is: don’t fly in an environment where your heli blends in with the background. And mount your gyro under the boom on a Trex!!!! :arggg:

[WayneBrown]

got a few:
When the guy so eagerly sets up your chopper and asks "You want a 3D setup right?", don't forget to tell him you already know how to fly.
Ya shoulda seen Rodney high stepping wondering WTF during my test flight after he setup my trusty old Hawk Sport a couple years ago.. :twisted:

Don't fly FM (PPM) with a NEXTEL strapped to your side, every so often they scan for signals.. (set one next to a radio or computer for a few minutes, you'll see..)

Don't let your kid fly your high dollar chopper around Clintstone.. ESPECIALLY if the kid is better than you.. :badair:

If you are nervous flying in front of a largish group, don't let DebianDog video your flight...
:shock:
Finally:
Don't fly with H to the C if you have thin skin, You'll either get better quick, or have your feelings hurt.. ( I got better BTW) Search for 'Wayne Iceblades Brown' video for a firsthand look at the razzing you get.. :D

[WayneBrown]

http://www.helifreak.com/viewtopic.php?t=15483

[DebianDog]

http://www.helifreak.com/viewtopic.php?t=15483


That's just verbal abuse from a friend. :lol:

[eeeyal]

:clappp :rolling

[DarkWombat]

I built a small stand to allow me to get tach readings and gyro movement on my T-Rex 450. It consists of a good-sized 8-pound wooden block with a lazy susan bearing mounted on top, and on top of the bearing are two parallel pieces of wood with big velcro straps on them to hold the heli down. I mount the tach on the side of the stand (far enough out to only see blades, not paddles) and it can rotate on the stand so I can play with the gyro.

Anyways, so I was checking out the tail hold while the heli was powered up and on the stand by (DON'T EVER DO THIS!) pushing the tail fin to the right and seeing how well the heli could counter the movement. The tail moved a little to the right and in my infinite wisdom I gave it a jab of right rudder, which made the tail swing left and couple my thumb with the tail blades. So it was a 12,000rpm TWHACK-THWACK-THWACK! I instinctively hit the throttle hold....

And I was like "*EXPLETIVE DELETED!!!*" and my thumb was cut up real deep. I raced downstairs and grabbed two icepcks and a paper towel and sat on the couch thinking "Stupid, stupid, stupid....". My thumb was numb for a good hour or so and was all bruised and icky for two and a half weeks.

[BigVanVader]

Started up my Bell 222 scale with a low battery, spooled it up to almost lift off and radio stopped right there. I was not letting this baby get away so I slide on the ground under it and grabbed it right at the back of body and and help it wil one hand until it ran out of fuel. Do you know how long a os 32 will run? damn it seemed like hours. That was a stupid thing to do just incase you dont know it.
I was there for that one....hehe....os32's run quite a while on a full tank in case your wondering......myself,I was hovering my Hawk3 in my friends back yard with my back right up against his porch(no escape path)...well i was hovering too close to myself and the switch went bad on my reciever and the heli came straight backward into me...got a nasty little bruise on my leg from the tailblades but i was spared getting hit by the mains.....lesson learned,dont fly too close to yourself especially with no escape route :arggg:

[reman]

setting up the esc, I pluged a lipo into my ccpm t-rex without taking the blade caddy off. didn't think it could strip 2 servos at the same time :oops:

[DEX0807]

Strap your gyro down with velcro or zip ties as a backup to the foam pad. :!:

Ever have your gyro fall off it's mount inverted?? :shock:

Wires were not long enough to get caught in the blades but talk about an out-of-contol heli!!!!!!! :WOW

[reman]

Anyone else kidded themself that "Its not THAT windy, It a'll be ok to fly out there".
only to return 15 minuits later with lots more "pieces" than you left with ?

[HeliDan]

I chose to ignore the warning on my ni-mh battery 'do not run charger from vehicle battery while driving'.

I have not seen that warning before. May I ask why this is a problem? If it is because the charger cannot handle the slightly increased voltage from the vehicle charging system, would that not be a charger problem?

[Tonystott]

I don't know if I would call nearly 20% increase "slightly increased voltage". It is hard to know what the outcome would be, so disclaimers get slapped on everything...

[HeliDan]

Tonystott
What exactly do you mean by a 20% increase? a vehicle electrical system operates from ~12.5 to 14.5VDC, which I admitt is a 17% variance. If a company is manufacturing something that operates from a vehicle system, it should handle this. Unless they 'cheaped out' and under engineered it. As an electrical engineer, I can tell you that it is nothing to make a switching system (which most of these are) handle a much larger voltage variation.
I am just curious and want to learn, but I also question test results.

-dB

[Pinecone]

And a fully charged lead acid battery (6 cell) is nominally 13.8 volts, so the difference between 13.8 and 14.5 (should be max charging voltage) is very small. And my cars tend to run abut 13.8 - 14 volts under power.

[oscillator]

OK, I know this guy who has an Electrical Engineering Degree and even a Masters in Engineering, 20 years experience (in engineering), blah, blah.....

So I, ergh, he gets a new LiPo and proceeds to remove the shrink wrap from both leads and start soldering on the new connectors. Well, you can guess what happened - at some point the leads touched and POW! Now I solder the leads one at a time, making sure the 1st lead is secure and insulated before exposing the 2nd.

-Mark

[nitroabuser]

OK, here's one. Something I did that was really stupid........ many times, but only one thing went really wrong. The stupid thing I did often was fly my 3dx-400 (tail in hover) inside a local hobby shop. The thing that went really wrong is next. Earlier that week, I set up my radio for idle up. Programming the radio was a little confusing, when I set the idle-up pitch curve, Instead of having (low stick, mid stick, high stick) -7, 0, 10. I ended up having 10, 0, 10. This is correct, I had no negative pitch in idle-up mode. I dropped the throttle/collective stick, I meant to give the heli some negative pitch to see how much it loaded the motor down, and it leapt into the air, scared the crap out of me. I immediately moved to mid stick, but the heli was still climbing, I steered it away from an expensive ($6000) bi-plane hanging from the ceiling and ended up hitting a less expensive (not sure how much) plane in front of the expensive one. The only visual damage (to the airplane) was the nosecone, chip in the prop and damaged the cowling. the plane I hit has a 4 stroke horiz twin in the plane (hope the crank isn't bent). for the 3DX-400, bent main shaft, main feathering shaft, tail shaft, tail grips.

Well needles to say, I learned many lessons from this experience.....
1. ALWAYS check your heli's controls, especially if you make any changes.
2. DON'T fly indoors with lots of expensive stuff around you.
3. see #1.

[WayneBrown]

Don't assume the first try at something will fully succeed. You may find out the hard way that you are educated beyond your intelligence.

[octotus]

am really really new (really a noob).
but within these three weeks - i did make at least one stupid mistake. a mistake that can possibly hurt.

I fly(??) a hummingbird V4 FP that comes with a 6-ch tx.
there is a "normal - ccpm mode" switch in the tx. The manual says - "do not switch modes while flying else your heli will stop working".

My heli was on the floor - but was still connected to the battery. I flipped the switch and viola - she shot up 8 feet into the air - right in the middle of my living room and luckily fell down without hurting itself or the others around. I suppose i got lucky but it was my first scare with the heli.
:oops:
newbies: DO NOT FLIP THE SWITCH - The warning doesnt mean your heli will keep quiet. It means it will do something that you DONT want it to.

k

[txtrcr]

where was this when i decided it was a good idea to test out the trex 450 se in the house.

i knew it wasnt a good idea and my finger still hurts.

heres the story:

one of the many attempts at what one would consider flight, i started in the yard, just hopping the thing around. it would come up and get all crazy. so i figure its wind thats messing it up. my cousin says try it once in the house to make sure. im like no way! after several mins of lift off and nearly killing the heli i decide to bring it up in the house just once, that was mistake number one.

mistake number two was sitting down so i couldnt get out of the way, mistake number three was sitting 5 feet away from it. so just as i suppected the heli jumped up and started drifting towards me, i thought ok i can fix this ill just steer it away and throttle it down. unfortunatly thinking and actually doing are two seperate things. the main blade bounced off the radio and went down the side of my finger peeling a nice size fellet as it went and then i throttled it down. prolly lucky it was cf blades and not wood i would still be picking splenters out of, well i could only imagine. LOL no helis in the house!!

[Tonystott]

Actually woodies might have been better, as they could have broken, and they are softer than CF

[txtrcr]

i read a few posts where folks had to let there helis run out of gas because of some unforseen event. it got me thinkin. there as these little plugs that you insert into the exhaust pipe of a nitro car to stop the engine. i know that with a heli its difficult to get to the exhaust pipe because of the swinging blades of death. but how about attach one of these plugs to a pole that you can slide under the blades and plug the exhaust so that you dont have to wait for the thing to run out of fuel. doesnt even have to be the plug im talking about just anything to choke off the exhaust flow. you all still use the presure line that plugs into the muffler/pipe correct, make a device to pinch the line from afar, like needle nose pliers attached to a pole by one handle and a cord tied to the other handle that you can pull to close the jaws of the plyer. just a thought

[Leeadam]

well my worst one was about 15 years ago as a 19 year learning to fly my nitro schulter champian. i went to the flying club and switched on my transmitter totally forgetting about the crystal board or checking who was on same frequency...
only did i realise my mistake when i could hear everyone panicking as a large expensive shiny lovingly built plank seemed to be flailing around in the sky seemingly outta control...and hey guess what it was seemingly outta control as he was on the same frequency as me..whoops...it nose dived in the next field i remember the guys having to dig the engine outta the ground it must have been buried 6 inches into the mud....
i wanted the earth to open up beneath me
:oops:
...it didnt unfortunately...just my...WALLET!

[kama1]

ROFLMAO
OMG the smack talk in that vid was funny
suck the clouds outa the sky....lol