Startin out a rough year.

[Flyinfool]

I guess you have to start somewhere.
Had my first planting of the new year.
I figure that if I plant enough helies that one of them is bound to take root and start to grow a heli tree. I guess that I just need to find the right depth and time of the year for proper germination.

I tried this one in 5*F temps with about 6 inches of fresh snow.
I had my freshly rebuilt Stinger 50 and was punching holes all over in the sky when the dreaded total lockout happened. Engine to idle, swash to zero, and just a little rudder. Well it worked as planned, even though the heli was on a 45* down-line which it held perfectly and made a slow spin to the frozen ground with the headspeed bleeding off all the way, and POOPH it disappeared into the snow, gone nothing sticking up and visible at all.
For those of you in the south let me explain, that frozen ground is harder than concrete that has had 10 years to cure, You might even be able to cut diamond with frozen ground.

As the vultures and I walked over to the hole in the snow, the first pieces of heli started to become visible. It was a flybar paddle about 3 feet from the hole in the snow. Not a good sign.
Some how the heli traveled under the snow so it was not at the impact point any more. After digging around we finally found all of the parts and headed back to a table for the post mortem.

Both landing gear struts, both side frames, one tail blade grip one carbon blade, and...... and..... that's all? Didn't even bend a flybar.

After a bunch of research on the web and messing around with my RX I did find the cause of the failsafe.
I had about a 10 year old R309 RX in there, Now I find that people refer to that RX as Dial-A-Crash. For those not familiar the R309 is the first Synthesized RX that Futaba made to go with the 9Z. It has two dials for setting the frequency. One dial is for the tens digit and the other is for the one's digit of the frequency number. What happens is that the switch wears out from vibration over time and that switch then reads as a one. So I guess the safest channel would be 11. Anyhow in my case I was on 54 which changed to 51 and the Rx could no longer find my TX on that frequency.
I was able to duplicate the failsafe on the bench by just the slightest touching of the switch.

[SUPERFLYJAY]

WELL IT SUCKS WHEN YA PLANT ONE, BUT AT LEAST ONE GOOD THING CAME OUT OF IT. YOU KNOW WHAT THE CAUSE WAS AND U KNOW YOUR RADIO IS GOOD. NOTHING SCARIER THEN HAVIN MULTIBLE PLANES ON THE SAME RADIO AND BEING SCARED TO FLY THEM WITH FEAR THE RADIO CAUSED THE LAST CRASH. WEVE ALL BEEN THERE B4 AND WILL BE AGAIN

[Nitrohuffer]

I had a tail control rod sprout this spring. Off camera is the rest of the compost 50 pile.

[PLANKBONE]

what percent nitro do you use to get that thing growing?

[Nitrohuffer]

30% seems to get good results, not so good for my lawn though. I blame it on the naighboors dog when my wife asks what the dead spots are from.

[Flyinfool]

30% has not been doing a good job of making things grow for me.
I might need to try some 60% boat fuel

[CSpaced]

Sorry to hear about your problems, but after something like that happens its nice to know that it was an electrical problem and not a mechanical problem - which means it wasn't really your fault

[Flyinfool]

Thats my story and I'm sticking to it.