Hi All,
I was busy with work at the end of last week while the "Visalia shoot down" thread
ran. I have a bit of first hand information to add.
First let me say, that I've attended CVRC's Fall Festival every year since 1991 and
have always had fun, been impressed with the "tight ship" that they run, and have
never been shot down, not even on practice day, until this year.
I decided to fly 2 meter this year just for the heck of it and I planned to fly my
Image as my primary and my SuperV-2M as my backup. Practice day was non-eventful, but
on Saturday morning, my Image's Airtronics "blue cube" receiver was going nuts with
apparent radio glitching. I decided to fly my SuperV-2M rather than risk a loss of my
Image. The weather turned out to be perfect "SuperV" conditions as most lift during my
rounds was wind-free and very close.
During the last, eight minute round of Saturday, I picked up a nice little HLG size
thermal off launch and my SuperV doubled launch height in short order. The thermal
drifted past the landing zone and continued to build. At five minutes into the flight,
I was at a stupid high altitude, questioning the wisdom of even blinking. Without
warning, my plane nosed up violently and I thought that the core must be awesome to
knock me so hard. Quickly, I realized that I had no control and all attempts to get
things back under control failed. I had checked my battery before the round, so I
ruled that out and began yelling out my frequency as I pulled full flaps and attempted
to regain control with different antenna angles.
The plane could not have been pointed in a more perfect vertical line as it barreled
into the plowed field from well over 1,000 feet. Someone was standing at the corner of
the field with a handheld scanner that had the R/C channels programmed and he had
punched in my channel that I had been calling out. With my radio now turned off, there
was a solid R/C signal on my channel. With the radio placed against a carbon wing to
add a bit of directionality, the culprit seemed to be around the transmitter impound.
I asked my timer to stay with the group that had formed while I was driven out into
the field to retrieve my plane.
As one would guess, my flawless SuperV was no more. Every servo broken, receiver
smashed, battery flattened, fuselage toast, wings destroyed, but the Hoopes wing
connectors were still intact ;-) On my way back to the field, they began calling my
name over the loudspeaker.
Larry Taylor and Ed Hipp from CVRC were standing at the impound with a look of great
displeasure. They indicated that a transmitter had been accidently let out without a
frequency pin, on my channel. Apparently, impound had released the radio without a pin
and the pilot had turned on without the pin. The standard operational procedure had
failed even though it had worked and worked successfully for a long time. I
appreciated the clubs' forthrightness as they offered to pay for my loss. I made a few
concessions and we arrived at a fair price for the lost plane. I really just wanted my
SuperV back, but that wasn't an option.
Since I was shot down at five minutes into an eight minute round, they decided to have
me fly a three minute precision flight at the end of the day. I had changed out the
Airtronics receiver in my Image and replaced it with a Hitec Super Slim, but by the
time that I got to the winches at the end of the day to fly the three minute flight,
the equipment crew had already stripped all of the retriever lines to replace them for
the next day. I was concerned that the plastic tubing and the small ring on the winch
line may not release smoothly without the drag of the retriever line. Sure enough, the
line hung up on the tow hook and the attempt to zoom failed to release the line. I
dropped the flaps and flew tight circles around the line all the way to the ground. My
timer ran back to the pits and grabbed the chute off my own winch in the pits and Tim
Renaud tied it on the winch line and the launch went off without further problems.
BTW, my Image performed perfectly on the second day.
During the twelve hour ride home, I had plenty of time to consider some technical
solutions that might help prevent a similar situation from occurring again. The
solution would assist by physically inventorying as well as monitoring RF signals of
incoming as well as outgoing radios in the impound area without complicating or
slowing the normal process. I've conveyed the possible solutions on to the CVRC group
for their input.
I certainly felt that I had been put through the wringer, but a few days after I
returned home from Visalia, I found that I had received a double hosing. For some
unexplainable reason, in the scoring, I had been moved to OPEN class even though I had
flown EVERY flight with a 2 meter. In fact, my accumulative score was 45 points higher
than the pilot who was awarded the third place trophy in 2 meters. Bad
karma..
