Monday 17 November 2014

Stinger 64 MIA

search and rescue underway...

The perfect afternoon begged to get the planes out, so I headed to the field on the way home planning to give the Stinger and Radjet a quick run in the gorgeously sunny conditions with a cool southerly blowing.



As I've mentioned before, the Stinger is a bit twitchy in turns, so I've turned my low rates right down making it much less sensitive, and have subsequently become accustomed to it's moderated behaviour with recent flights. Unfortunately something must have flicked the aileron rate switch to high as I found the Stinger alarmingly sensitive to these inputs.

I managed to level the Stinger up and bring it round in a turn as I frantically sought to get the switch reset without crashing the jet and, when this was finally accomplished, I hit the elevators to get the now low-flying Stinger some air. The effect of this, however, was not the expected leap into the sky but rather an abrupt disappearance into the grass of the paddock.


I can only surmise that, having been distracted by resetting the switch, the Stinger had adjusted orientation and that the elevator had sent it spearing sideways into the shrubbery. Alarmed and disappointed, I climbed the fence and headed through the marshy flats to where I'd last seen it go down.

Emerging from the tall reed grass onto the plain I expected to see the brightly-coloured Stinger lying about conspicuously, but instead saw nothing. Having not made an exact reference as to where it had gone down due to my expectation of finding it immediately, I commenced a somewhat random series of traverses across the paddocks, inspecting thorn bushes and grass clumps for any sign of the downed speedster.

Finally, baffled as to the mysterious disappearance of the jet, I hauled out the Phoenix with camera on board for a search and rescue mission. An FPV setup would've been perfect for this situation, however I'll have to make do with a video analysis later...

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