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After charging up the motor battery nothing happened, so I took the charger and the battery down to the hobby store, where they put a voltmeter on the battery and said it had a full charge on it. They even tried it out on another motor and it worked fine. So I bought another motor, and another battery so I could take two out to the field with me. When I got home I decided to try the motor before going through all the trouble to remove it. For some reason it kicked right in after I just gave it a little tweak. So I got everything together and headed out to the field.
Upon getting to the field I set out to assemble the plane and discovered I had forgotten to bring the wing spar along. So I had to go back to the house and get the wing spar. Once I had to plane put together I set off to fly it, and it plunged nose first into the ground right after I launched it. This blew the fuse out and I hadn't brought along the spare fuse, so back to the house again to get the spare fuse. On my next attempt it again plunged right into the ground, I thought I was working the controls the wrong way. But a closer inspection revealed that pulling back on the stick was moving the elevator down. Not the way the controls are suppose to work, this was easily corrected by reversing the channel on the transmitter.
The next time I launched the plane it was in the air. The flight seemed to last forever and there were several close calls with the ground. And there were some people sitting on the deck of a nearby house and I could hear their awes as the plane nearly impacted with the ground. After a while I got really antsy, the stress was getting to me. I had never had a RC plane airborne for this long before. There was very little wind that day so the speed of the plane seem really fast as I couldn't head it into the wind so it stayed close. But I managed to keep it in the area I wanted to keep it in, away from any houses and the swampy area to the north.
But after the trip to the hobby store and the two trips back to the house it was late in the day and the sun was low in the sky. When the plane went into the sun I lost track of its attitude and I knew it was headed for the ground. So I tried to pull it out, what ever I did was not the right thing, as the plane dove nose first into the ground at full speed. At this point I heard the people sitting on the deck give me a round of applause. Upon reaching the aircraft I announced that would be my last flight for the day.
The plane was mostly intact except for the engine mount, which had be totally pulverized. The damage to the wings was minor and the canopy was busted into pieces. The worst damage occurred when I got the plane home and I went to check the operation of the receiver and servos. The plastic had been ripped off the end of the plug provided to charge the battery with out removing it from the plane and the two wires were touching. So when I hooked up the battery I saw a lot of smoke, that wasn't coming from my cigarette. I fried 2 of the 3 servos and all but one of the channels on the receiver. So I had to mail order a new receiver, no place around here stocks them.
So I learned 2 things from this flight.
