[MT-ALES] Don't be me.....

[CURTIS SUTER]

Don't be me!  @$*%)#

I am so addicted to this Triangle Racing.  I haven't practiced anything so devotedly in years.

Yesterday morning I'm out all by myself and am flying/practicing and having a great time in marginal conditions.  A bit of overcast and a cool morning.  I launched and flew a few laps and decided to go up for a second attempt.  I always get two launches in F5J per battery charge.  Our field is along a road with some power lines along it.  We've had a few planes tangle with them and it all cases the woodies survive but the carbon planes, well not so much.  I get a couple laps in then am down to about 50-75m and am circling in what I think may be lift on the wrong side of the power lines.  I'm listening to the GPS Vario and notice, that when I try to turn the model it doesn't respond!  Yikes!  I look at the transmitter and all is good but still no response.  The vario is still beeping away.  She's just in a nice shallow turn and descending slowly.  I'm about 300m down range so start running, holding the transmitter up over my head and nothing.  I turned the transmitter off and back on with no response.  The model is nice and happy going round and round with just a slight pitch phugoid going on.  I jump the first water line and keep running.  The model is now about over the power lines and much lower and I say to myself please oh please don't hit them.  It makes it over them and now she's back over the main field.  Now it's much lower and over the second set of water lines and I'm like please don't hit the water line, just land in the nice alfalfa and she'll be okay.  She goes over the line in a slight 20-30 degree bank, pitches up and has a slight stall and as the nose drops the wings level and she lands slightly nose down in the alfalfa in perfect condition!  Whew!  Now that wasn't fun at all, but it was like winning the lottery.  I opened the hatch and the RC Electronics RC Multi 3 device display was lit up and working.  The receiver had no lights nor did the Sparrow GPS unit.  I cycled the battery and no change.  So I walk back to the pickup truck and put a meter on the battery and the three cells read 3.05v, 2.80v and 2.99v.  Yikes!  Put in another battery and I flew some more triangles.  What a day!  Best I could do was 2 Triangles all morning, but the model is luckily still in one piece.  That I call a great day!

Curtis
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