Recently I had an incident that the wing broke off after a pop-top at around 100 feet high. At that time I still have all the control except the missing wing.

The plane immediately pointing nose down and going into a spiral like spin, I tried to use aieron to stop the spin without luck, I then kill the ignition at probably the last 2-3 second of impact and seems like it spin slower but still pointing down. And at the last second I pull full elevator and luckily the plane belly land, but hard..... end up with broken CF landing gear, prop and dent on the cowl.

It also happened many times on my RealFlight simulator 6 but I never able to save/land the plane properly.

What would you do? Pray?

Practice/Experience...Sometimes letting it spiral in is the safest practice. That's the pilots call!

Rudder toward the remaining wing, fly it in knife edge. Turn with the elevator, correcting roll with aileron.

I haven't had to do it in real life, but I practice regularly on the sim since I'm rough on my planes. I can 3D several Realflight planes with one wing

Originally Posted by MadMonkey

Rudder toward the remaining wing, fly it in knife edge. Turn with the elevator, correcting roll with aileron.

I haven't had to do it in real life, but I practice regularly on the sim since I'm rough on my planes. I can 3D several Realflight planes with one wing

+1, I have performed 2 one wing landings successfully and these are the basic steps, also don't panic lol

Honestly, if there are lots of people at your field, or if the runway is close to the pits, do the responsible thing and dump it at a safe distance. It happened to me last year and I had control of it in knife edge but decided to dump it in some tall grass because the runway is close, plus the airplane would probably have gotten more damage from hitting the runway than tall grass.

I can do one wing touch and goes on G4.5 but I kinda feel like if it happened for real I wouldn't stand a chance.

Use elevator to stop the spiraling...I'd say dump it unless you feel that you have a good enough handle of it...don't fight with it. Hopefully you won't ever have it happen again so none of this will matter.

I had one wing shatter years ago... the plane went into knife edge all by itself. Throttle and elevator were all that really affected flight.

I chose to send the plane into the trees rather than play around with a cripple and risk hitting the other people on the flight line.

Stall the plane and kill the engine just above a tree/bush and let it fall into the branches. Airframe may be destroyed but you probably won't hurt the engine or radio system.

I saw this thread and decided to practice on the sim (set the strength multiplier low and yank the elevator, makes it easy ). After about 5 attempts i could get the plane back to the runway, and after another 10 i could land on the wheels! Its really a fun thing to do and i guess if it ever happens and you can do so safely, it would save you a plane

I didn't have a landing gear

Tarzan Sabre 15.5 (1 min 13 sec)

I had three one wing landings this year. The first one (71 slick) was due to a spar failure, the second one (EF 60 Edge) was due to me forgetting the wing bolt (dohh!), and the third (other 71 slick) was due to a structural failure at the wing bolt. In all three cases I put it into a spin and at the last minute I pulled full up elevator. All three planes ended up repairable. The first one got warranty replaced (god bless 3DHS) but was repairable. The main damage was to the landing gear. The second one ended up in the tall grass/brush and other than never finding the wing that broke off it was flying as soon as the new one showed up. The third one was only minorly damaged with sheeting work being the hardest thing to fix. The landing gear did need some repair work as well.

Since they developed into spins I just use elevator and aileron to try to bring them down on the field and with the least amount of sink rate. The two that ended badly were only a 100 or so feet high so there was not a lot of time to figure anything out and like others have said trying something more radical could have ended with the plane towards all the people. Yes, up high you can try to bring it into knife edge and I have been practicing this more and more as the season progressed but even then the best you can do it to knife into trees or tall grass because the aircraft will more damaged landing on it's side. You'll never be able to hover land it as the model is just too unbalanced and realize you will probably knife it with the wing down.

I wish I did not have so much experience with this maneuver but there it is.

Be sure to kill the engine before the impact... If the prop is stopped you are less likely to do major engine damage.

Don't panic... work with what you have to control the impact speed and location.

A strange failure that I have run into is covering lifting in a manner to act as an airbrake on one wing. The only way I could maintain control was to fly in a harrier. That was my first... and best... harrier landing.

-Pray and have fun. One wing flying starts about 2/3 through this video.

EXTREME FLIGHT 48" Extra 300EXP Retirement flights (8 min 23 sec)

I'd throw my radio on the ground and go home
Jeff Sikes

nicely done Daniel !
could you try again on a gasser?

Originally Posted by danielph

-Pray and have fun. One wing flying starts about 2/3 through this video.

EXTREME FLIGHT 48" Extra 300EXP Retirement flights on Vimeo