Mad Max is on Fire!

Literally...

Before.

After. If you could look under the cowl or up front in the fuse, you would see the fired out damage. 

Max took off sweet on half throttle, and I started a nice right hand turn on climb out. 40% rates, 20% expo. She seemed graceful! Getting her back upright however took full left aileron, and any attempt to allow anything less than full left lead to a right roll. Then, for a moment it seemed I had control, but then a moment later she rolled right and I needed full left aileron. I throttled back, no improvement, I throttled forward, no change. I had to hold full left. I tried a right hand turn and she went completely out of control and slammed into Mount Doom in Mordor. It took a second for the sound to reach us. Antonio and I drove over and scaled Mt. Doom, but you could smell the fire as we stood at the foot of the mound. It became stronger, that acrid, burning plastic and ozone smell. As I climbed up and started to be able to see her in the deep weeds that cover the mound, I could see the smoke rising out of the fuse and from the vents in the cowl. I grabbed the battery connection and it came off the ESC in my hand. The fire had already melted the solders! I pulled the smoking battery and tossed it down the mound in one move noting the EC5 connector and the wires were blackened and melted. I blew on the ESC and it stopped smoking by the time I got back to the car. The fuse was cracked behind the wing, but not separated, the gear sheared off and the hatch tossed, but there wasn't much damage outside the burn marks and melted EPO foam. Once we got back to the pits I tried to pull the ESC out, but the motor wires had melted off the ESC and come out like loose hairs, and one of the ESC capacitors followed. The prop was broken, but the motor looks fine, but I suspect she is burnt. 

I was all set to remove the electronics that survived and give the hulk to Steve for spares for his much better behaved MX2, but Ron Johnson came over. Seems he's looking for a challenge and something to do, so he asked if he could have it to work on. If anyone can fix Mad Max and get her flying, its Ron! So, let's see what magic he can work!

I flew the Cubby and Alpha with the Dx8 today, and love that radio. Very happy day all in all! Took Antonio up on the Buddy Box (Luke didn't want to come out today). Storm was moving in so after Cubby flipped on the ground and broke her motor mount I called it a day.