View Full Version : Dragonus Wooden Blades
I have a Dragonus Plus with a set of Dragonus wooden blades with about 20 flights on them all gentle hovering. It is mounted in a 500E fuselage. I was flying this evening in my studio, fortunately I was low when there was a bang the canopy front came off, the helicopter started to shake like crazy. After I had managed to land I then felt a shearing pain in my left leg, there was a 100mm gash there. What had happened was the weight on one of the blades had come off and this had caused the vibration and injury to my leg. I hate to think what would have happened if I had been at eye level! I post this as a warning to other flyers that while you can have a lot of fun with these they can also be very dangerous.
DJ NeX
02-28-2008, 07:37 PM
that's scary.
Flying Foot Doc
04-06-2008, 12:07 PM
What had happened was the weight on one of the blades had come off and this had caused the vibration and injury
What comes to mind is the different colors and open wood on the blade. Had it been modified for a different look or something? That might be the culprit. Some tip over blade wacks have loosened the weights in some of my blades. Doc
bladeking63
04-06-2008, 12:52 PM
Flew with an older guy years ago that had more money then sense and didn't build what I considered a safe machine. I saw this happen in the field in front of my house. His machine chucked a weight and it nailed him in the stomach. Thankfully it hit him on the flat, not at the end, or I have no doubt it would have penetrated deeply or even a thru and thru. He had a HUGE bruise over most of his upper torso for quite a while. Thats when I changed the way I glued in my weights (we didn't have CF blades yet and FG blades were JUST coming out). SCARY STUFF!!!!:shock:
forjer
04-06-2008, 03:26 PM
I'm curious about the history of the blades. How old, how many flights, how well were they balanced / tracking, how many tip overs or blade strikes, what kind of humidity are they exposed to during storage / flight?
As I said in my post 20 flights gentle hovering only. No tip overs or blade strikes. Also perfect balance and track. The different colour on the blade is where the plastic shrink film came off when the weight let go. On talking to the Dragonus rep up until now they have not been gluing the weights in!!!! Hopefully they now have fixed the problem.
sidewayz6.6
08-04-2008, 11:56 AM
Hey CT4, where's that canopy from in your avatar? Looks siiick man, I'd like to get one.
Custom 1 off to my design. But here are a couple of shots of it.
sidewayz6.6
08-12-2008, 04:22 PM
Ahh, cool man. That's one of the coolest canopies I've seen, for sure.