First crash of 2016!

[Yooper42]

Accidently used all my HS up rolling from inverted to shiny side up during an auto tonite.......fell a good 50 feet or so with near zero HS and went thud in the hay field. Only obvious damage, tail boom, strut, blades even appear to be ok. Impressed with how well this bird took the hit.

[flyingquisinart]

Oops!

Glad it wasn't too bad. That's the nice thing about crashing without head speed. The only time I had significant damage on my Pantera was when my tail servo quit, and I panicked. It ate itself pretty good doing the chicken dance after it threw the receiver battery.

[Yooper42]

Yeah about halfway through the flip, the "Oh $h!t" alarm went off in my head and all i could do was wait for impact....

[jbeech]

I'm always a little surprised seeing sport pilots (or beginners) arrive at the field and proudly pull out a lightweight carbon fiber model like a Goblin or T-Rex. What's mental process leads them down the path to hooking up with a twitch-at-the-speed-of-thought model only to use it to hover and fly around? Especially considering the cost of spare parts . . . like a Goblin tail boom being about 100 bucks! I don't get it.

[Yooper42]

For the record, im impressed with the P6. Its not that it wasnt capable of the manuver i was doing, i just missed judged how much HS got used up flipping it back upright during an auto. From how hard it pancaked into the ground im sure id be replacing frames, maybe more on a REX or goblin. From what i can see, im at about a $30 bill for repairs to the P6...

[jbeech]

Little known fact, the average P6 crash runs about $38. As to which maneuvers a P6 is capable of performing? All of them! Watch Kyle Stacy as a little kid with his - http://tinyurl.com/z333e6k and ponder this; wanna learn to fly 3D? Accept you're gonna crash. Comes with the territory! So then the only question is; would you rather spend $10 on a tail boom or a $100?

Basically, the fact your model has plastic versus carbon fiber side frames has zero to do with learning to perform the maneuvers because the helicopter itself is capable of everything in the book and then some. This is why I shake my head at club pilots and beginners pulling a 600-class helicopter worth $2000 from the trunk of their car. Simply put, if anything, an expensive helicopter holds them back because they're so afraid of crashing it they don't fly much. Frankly, I see this all the time.

And worse, especially for beginners (but with club-pilots also), an ultralight 3D-oriented helicopter isn't just fragile but they're a twitchy handful in the air too because they're optimized for quickness on the controls. Thus, unlike a stable and easy to hover P6, these models are nervous-feeling and ready to dart off in the blink of an eye! Think of it this way. If your kid wants to learn to ride horses, do you put her on a gentle old nag, or a trembling thoroughbred eager to break free? Kind of obvious, eh?

Maybe that's why Ray Stacy (Kyle's Dad) had him flying a Pantera as a little boy, eh? Pretty smart guy in my opinion. Well, guess what? The same thing holds true for an adult getting into the sport. The difference is unlike a kid, the adult has money in his pocket and can afford the Goblin and all the required doo-dads. Question is; is this the smart way to get your feet wet? Most decide which model to get by copying what the club expert does. However, in doing this, they usually end up with a fragile model, which is wholly unsuited for the abuse of a beginner, e.g. the knocks and tip overs to which the model will, with certainty, be subject to. Just saying.

[Garland]

I learned that in the late 90s with matching MA xcell 50 helis.They flew great! But I crashed both in a weeks span to the tune of 400$ In parts not including the main blades.

I flew Century Ravens for many reliable years after that, but finally found a home with Audacity 7 years ago. I still have my old school MA helis, got rid of the Century's, but I haven't felt the need to switch from Audacity to try the SAB, Compass, Synergy or other brands. I might add those to my Audacity fleet, but no hurry as funds won't allow right now