One of those days

Yes this is long but I am exasperated and bored waiting through a holiday for parts.

Ok so the weather was not the best.
It was very warm out last Friday at 45*F, little wind, but very overcast, and even a little light fog.
I brought out the whole fleet. (At least the flyable part of it.)

First flight was with my Stinger 50. It was a little hard to keep orientation against the dark sky but I was still having fun.
By the 3 rd flight I was shooting autos and trying to work up the courage to try my first REAL rolling auto. Well I almost got there, One the last auto I was rolling the heli back and forth about 20-30* just feeling it out. Well I must have done toooo much feeling and let the head speed get down to far and kind of plopped the landing, I didn't think it was that hard, It only bounced about a foot back up in the air Well several of the links broke and allowed a boom strike. Dang.

So I figure that I'll get out my rap 50 SE that is set up as my night ship.
I haven’t flown it since summer so I thought I would get it ready for New Years Eve in daylight so I can see what is happening.
I am flying the rappy around thinking how hard it is the see the white canopy against this dark cloudy sky. I was doing consecutive loops with a piro at the top and just as I nailed the rudder at the top there is this terrible noise and the heli shaking violently, this lasted for about a half of a second then the shaking went away and the piros really started. The tail had thrown off one of the tail blades and with the extreme out of balance the other blade left to. It is totally amazing just how fast a heli can piro with no tail blades present. Since I was at the top of a loop the heli was inverted and believe me there is not a servo made that will allow anyone to stir the cyclic fast enough to matter. So all I could do was to hit throttlehold and kill the engine before impact. Well once you kill the engine there is no more torque, so as the heli was doing its best imitation of a flying brick the tail stopped spinning and the heli was coming straight nose down. OK up elevator seemed to be in order so I pulled full up and neg pitch to attempt an auto. Well I got it horizontal but did not have enough altitude to spin the head back up, another plopped auto.
The worst thing is that I have one of the new Gohbee 3 bearing tails that I was going to put on there to prevent this possibility. DOH.
Again not to bad the only damage is the broken tail hub, I even found both of my coveted lighted tail blades and they were fine.

Well I still had my trusty Stinger 90 in the back of the truck.
So I take the time to put away the rest of the day’s carnage to make room on the table for the 90.
I do my normal preflight and fueling procedure, hit it with the starter and it is being obstinate, cranking and cranking and it just doesn’t want to start. Maybe it saw the other two helies and was scared. Well it took about 10 minutes but I finally coaxed the engine to life. I was having a good time blasting about the sky when, you guessed it, OOOHHH NOOOO, The blades are about 4 inches out of track. Yep hit hold and head for the ground thinking this is gonna be ugly, the controls are very mushy on the way down. Expecting the worst I flared added pitch and we have plop down, again.
OOOHHH Poooo, the heli is at the other end of the field so it is a long walk to get there.
As I get closer I am thinking that it at least still looks like a heli.
At first glance the only thing I see wrong is the link is off of one blade grip.
After closer examination the only thing wrong is that the screw that holds the ball onto the blade grip has broken off. It must have been loose for a while because the screw was worn down pretty far before it broke.
I will have to adjust my inspection procedures.

Bottom line is that I had my first 3fer.
3 Helies in one day crashed and the combined total repair bill is still under $50. Wheeew dodged that bullet.

And I even used a vacation day for all of this fun.

[Nitrohuffer]

That stinks. I havn't had a day like that in a while, everything comes in threes right? LOL!

[wizard]

I'm not into helis yet but I have had 3'fer day with the planks hell I even had one 5'fer day. But I still think that any day at the field beats a day work.

[Stainless Skills]

How do you have a 5 fer? I dont even have 5 planes, and I would never take more than 3 to the field. How do you find time to fly 5? HAHAAHAHAAH

[rmothers]

flying so sorry to hear about your 3fer.. I never had a 3fer... Only a 2fer. I will give a good reason why and its not because i a great pilot.. I never never bring more than 2 things to the field. Even when i had my heli always 2 things. This is how i have never had a 3fer.. There were days that i am sure i would have had a ALLfer..

P.S. glad it was a cheap day at least...

Rodney

[wizard]

I normally take at least 3 to 5 planes when I go to the field. I don't always fly them all and 2 or 3 are electric. I like to start a day of flying with an electric just to get the thumbs warmed up.

[hillmanr2]

New years day I brought 2 working foamies and left with 2 busted ones

[Flyinfool]

	Quote:
	That stinks. I haven't had a day like that in a while, everything comes in threes right? LOL!

If bad things come in threes does that mean I am done crashing for the new year?
Dang that was still last year, I still need my crash(s) for this year.

That's my theory from now on.
If I only bring 2 I'll never have another 3 fer.