Machines can talk...

We should listen.

Past tips

Let's talk servos!

A short hint on Torque Rolls

We were at, what some say is the best scale contest in the world, Top Gun. I was the pilot of Graeme Mears beautiful 1/3 scale Super Cub in team scale. We have been a team for the last 5 or so years and have been very successful on the contest circuit winning most of the major events we entered. Graeme's models are absolutely outstanding.

Fortunately, we had highest static and the single highest flight score going into the third round. We are now preparing for the 3rd of 4 rounds. With our scores, and a bit more good luck, we were poised to win.

We were 3rd to fly early in the morning at beautiful West Palm Beach Polo grounds. The crowds were gathering. All seemed well and with about 30 min to go, we decided to peak off the batteries. This was a normal procedure, as they we always fully charged all batteries the night before. This was strictly a precautionary procedure that improved our comfort level.

Here comes the “speaking machine” part! When we went to top-charge the receiver battery with an automatic “peak detection” charger, it simply did not work. After checking all the connections it was tried again, to no avail. Then the switch was checked buy moving on and off to find out it “might “ have been left on from last night. This could have meant a possibly totally flat flight pack. Making sure it was in the off position, we tried to peak charge again and it worked. We thought, gee, if it were in fact dead, it would take at least an hour to fully charge!

But alas, the charger peaked off in about 10 minutes, which was normal for a near full battery. It was then deduced that the switch was in fact left in the off position and all was well. The battery was quickly checked with a digital voltmeter that had a _ amp load. It was in the green and we were good to go.

The PA system called us up to the line again, all was forgotten and we all focused on the flight ahead.

Well, after a great, very high scoring flight with all 10 and 9.5 scores the Super Cub went into a death Spiral on the landing approach. The beautiful model was totally destroyed and our chance of victory evaporated instantly.

Wow! What had just happened? We check for other radios and this and that as the wreckage was collected. The battery was intact and since we had a battery issue before we flew, that had to be top of our list to check. It was flat. Wow! Yep, that poor, beautiful Super Cub did tell us she had a flat battery, but we ignored her.

Yes, maybe a battery back up might have saved us, but that was not the pure reason why we crashed. Truth was, the radio had been left on all night. At the critical moment that we thought we might have had a dead battery, we should have used a voltmeter under load to check actually what was in it. What we did instead was to rely on a peak detection charger to shut it self down to tell us when the battery was full. In reality, it false peaked before it had completely charged the battery, which is not unusual for some peak chargers, especially when trying to charge a totally dead battery. When the battery was checked before we flew, it showed sufficient voltage because it was fresh off the quick charger yielding a higher voltage. Again, this is normal.

Fact is, the poor old Super Cub did in fact tell us, and yet, we ignored her. It was subtle. But the added pressures affected our thought processes.

It takes great care and attention to help stack the odds in our favor to assure a higher success rate. There are many, many reasons for these models to crash. Many reason are out of our control. Sometimes luck plays a role. Sometimes listening and learning is the difference!

So next time when an engine doesn’t sound quite right, land ASAP. Next time your radio glitches, or a servo isn’t smooth, or whatever doesn’t seem quite right realize that your complex machine might be giving you fair warning! Listen very carefully.

It is our responsibility to our selves and others to carefully to apply what we have learned, and use common sense in order to maximize everyone’s fun and safety!

The bottom line on the Super Cub is that for a bit more time spent in sorting out our battery issue would have saved a 1, 500 hour project being sadly destroyed.

We learn. Better yet, Graeme is building a new Super Cub that is significantly better. Hard to believe! Every part inside the new Super Cub is scale. Welded metal tube fuselage, moving parts such as scale control systems and so on. Amazing.

So, out of a crash, we learn….

This is one great hobby!