Exceed J3 Cubby, 4 ch
2/5/11 - 4/1/11
Has it really only been 2 months since I first built my little Cubby? Wow... so much has happened in those two months, I still can't believe thats all the time that has passed since I built her.
So the gyro stabilization idea was not so good an idea in my hands... This morning Luke and I thought we'd take advantage of the relatively calm weather and beautiful morning to fly the Cubby with the new gyro stabilization mod and the new prop protector. I had a little problem getting the prop to stay behind the protector, but a second O-ring solved that problem. The controls worked fine in low dual rate, and were free and clear. I throttled up and she took off into the wind. The problems started immediately. It seems when the rudder turned and tried to roll the plane a little, in addition to my aileron inputs, the gyro pushed her back upright. She started to oscillate in roll, and was uncontrollable. I tried high rates and it only worsened the problem. I could not turn her. I should have crashed her, but I got fixated on not spinning her to the ground. I started to realize she wasn't responding well to elevator either, and being a high wing load plane she wanted speed to stay aloft. I realized she was flying away from me out of control. By the time I understood how bad things were she was entering the trailer park and I could not crash her... I had my hands off the controls and she continued to oscillate wildly in roll, perfectly trimmed in pitch, as we watched her fly high into the trees behind the row of trailers. She tumbled a few branches down, breaking apart some, and then she was stuck. She wasn't coming down. I lost her.
A grounds keeper at the church drove over I think to ask us what we were doing there... before he could ask I told him we lost a plane in the trees and were going to try to find her. He didn't understand, but he could see the sadness with which I spoke and chose to simply wish us well and drove off.
Luke and I went to the base of the tree a couple of hundred yards away. I can barely see her up there. A wing strut had made it to the ground at the base of the tree. Lukey says he could see her, but I don't think so, she was buried deep and I could barely see her myself through the thick foliage. I made my way through the dense thorny poison ivy ridden brush (tore open my burn wound on my leg). The tree wasn't more than 10 feet back from the tree line, but it was tall and densely leafed. It took me several minutes to get back there. I still could not see her well from right underneath, catching just glimpses of her bright yellow airframe. I shook the tree to see what would happen, and it mocked me.There was no rescuing her, and I suspect she will be up there for a very long time.
If you look carefully you can see her in the tree...
With her we lost some friends...
A new motor, a new Gen Ace 1000 mAh 3S battery, a new Hobby King Orange Receiver and satellite, the new Hobbywing 20A ESC, the GY192 gyro (damn thing), and of course, Cubby with her servos...
May she rest in peace, high in the branches of that nondescript tree behind the nondescript trailer in a nondescript trailer park, behind the field behind the Pentecostal church off Popps Ferry Road in Biloxi.
Good bye friend... I miss you already.
PS: The more I think about it, I have a suspicion there was something amiss with the reciever. Though I had bound it before, it was not bound when I started her up and I had to rebind before the flight...
