[Heliboy]

My moment (one of many) of supreme stupidity almost resulted in a "swim of shame"....early 90s, one sunny Sunday morning here in lotus land..... I fired up my Northstar, set it down at waters edge on the eastside of Okanagan lake, shoved her off with a full tank o gas onboard for what I thought was gonna be another routine take off.....

When.....Yep, you guessed it, I'd forgotten to switch on the rx...dang thing idled its way in a long slow arc across Okanagan Lake, thankfully the little wind there was pushed it off course a few times but it maintained a mostly westerly direction, thank heavens I'd launched where the lake is at its narrowest.

Jumped in the car, drove across the bridge where a boater was in the act of trying to retrieve it as I pulled in to the old ferry dock across from the yacht club.

OK.....Ya don't hafta say it

[grosbeak]

I've walked that walk more than once...

[RCcanuck]

Here is one of my many walk of shames.

You Tube

You Tube

[rbwater]

Well the question is how many pages do we have for this thread? I could practically write a novel about the numerous walks of shame from my first two to three years of RC flying. However, I will just mention one in the hope that someone new to the hobby will see this & avoid my mistake.

My second ARF (after building a few SPADs following the first trainer ARF) was an e-flite Beaver. I think it's a very nice plane & not too much of a step up from a high wing trainer. One thing it has is servos mounted inside the wing for both ailerons and flaps. The manual recommends JR servos but I could not get the right ones at my LHS & so used some Hitec equivalents. However, the servo arms that came with the Hitecs were a bit too short for the aileron/flap installation. I had some other arms which were just right so I installed them.

The plane flew successfully several times but one day as I made my final turn to line up with the runway it suddenly went into a vertical spin and hit the ground hard, nose first. When the "walk" was over we could see that one of the ailerons was in a full down position while the other was in a normal centred position. There was no obvious reason for this so we figured it had happened on impact.

To make a long story short, the same thing happened two more times after repairs with various explanations suggested. I cannot say exactly how but at some point I realised that the substitute servo arms I had used were not Hitecs but JRs. I had no idea at the time that they were not interchangeable. Basically, what had happened was that the JR arm had slipped on the Hitec servo spline under the stress of a fairly tight turn leaving the aileron in the full down position.

Anyway, lesson learned & after the 3 times repaired fuselage was replaced, the plane continues to fly - this year on floats for the first time.

RB

[Max]

Originally Posted by rbwater

Well the question is how many pages do we have for this thread? I could practically write a novel about the numerous walks of shame from my first two to three years of RC flying. However, I will just mention one in the hope that someone new to the hobby will see this & avoid my mistake.

Keep 'em coming guys! I love these stories. There is something to be learned here. Some are humorous, but still contain a good lesson to be shared with others.

Originally Posted by RCcanuck

Here is one of my many walk of shames.

Glad to see you came around, John! I was kinda scratching my head after I saw your first post on the first page;

Originally Posted by RCcanuck

Nope! Never had one!

I KNOW you have some good zingers to share with us