jfint
08-21-2007, 12:48 AM
I crashed my airstar Mongoose this weekend ( I was SOOOO Heartbroken but that is a story for another time). The cause of the crash was a heat shrunk battery connection coming unplugged, very unfortunate and I will be switching to either those pricey little servo connector locks or zip ties.
I was work on smoothing pitch curves since this is going to be a photo platform, and doing slow, fairly low figure-8's when I completely lost the heli, its slowing drifted skyward and began to turn over sideways, I flipped both the hold and cutoff switches before it turned over but to no effect. at about 25 ft up it started its inverted decent, at a little better than hover pitch. The helicopter hit perfectly inverted, and thankfully the impact shut the motor down instantly, no chicken dance.
So after the loud cursing, maybe a little crying, and a post mortem cause investigation, which yielded that loose power ocnnection, I started to survey the damage. damage appears to consist of:
- Blades
- pitch levers (small aluminum 'fuse-type' linkage on mongoose)
- spindle shaft
- Dent in boom, but still usable due to belt drive
- some cracked paint pon canopy, but no structural damage
- one canopy mount post bent
I am still new to gassers, but it amazed me how little damage was done from an inverted crash, notice that I do not believe the main shaft was even bent!
Is this the norm for these gassers? I have always heard that the crash index was terrible, but it appears to me from this that if it were not for the blades then this would cost no more to repair than my raptor.
I'll get pics up tonight, but long story short I'm extremely impressed with the robustness of this ASI machine, despite being heartbroken about a stupid accident that should have been prevented I am glad I was still smoothing things out and did not have camera gear attached yet.
Here are the pics of the broken stuff and the not so broken stuff.
http://s62.photobucket.com/albums/h103/catslr7/Mongoose%20Crash/
Thanks for listening to me vent, and my psychotic process that lets me rationalize the cost of my toys ;-)
I was work on smoothing pitch curves since this is going to be a photo platform, and doing slow, fairly low figure-8's when I completely lost the heli, its slowing drifted skyward and began to turn over sideways, I flipped both the hold and cutoff switches before it turned over but to no effect. at about 25 ft up it started its inverted decent, at a little better than hover pitch. The helicopter hit perfectly inverted, and thankfully the impact shut the motor down instantly, no chicken dance.
So after the loud cursing, maybe a little crying, and a post mortem cause investigation, which yielded that loose power ocnnection, I started to survey the damage. damage appears to consist of:
- Blades
- pitch levers (small aluminum 'fuse-type' linkage on mongoose)
- spindle shaft
- Dent in boom, but still usable due to belt drive
- some cracked paint pon canopy, but no structural damage
- one canopy mount post bent
I am still new to gassers, but it amazed me how little damage was done from an inverted crash, notice that I do not believe the main shaft was even bent!
Is this the norm for these gassers? I have always heard that the crash index was terrible, but it appears to me from this that if it were not for the blades then this would cost no more to repair than my raptor.
I'll get pics up tonight, but long story short I'm extremely impressed with the robustness of this ASI machine, despite being heartbroken about a stupid accident that should have been prevented I am glad I was still smoothing things out and did not have camera gear attached yet.
Here are the pics of the broken stuff and the not so broken stuff.
http://s62.photobucket.com/albums/h103/catslr7/Mongoose%20Crash/
Thanks for listening to me vent, and my psychotic process that lets me rationalize the cost of my toys ;-)