Hoping good things come in threes

[Rodney Kirstine]

A couple of weeks ago I had the three crashes in the same week and maybe this last weekend I started the reversal of that trend.

I was flying my N5c in what was really the first proper flight with it after tweaking stuff for the last month after buying it.  Anyway, I'm getting near the end of the tank and the cyclic response starts feeling really slow and mushy.  It was really strange, unlike anything I've experienced so far.  I started bringing it down and about 5 feet off the ground I pretty much had no more cyclic or collective control, it just maintained the slow descent until it touched down.  Right as it touched down, one of the main blade pitch linkages pops off of the swash, along with the ball.  Whew!  I got home and went to re-install the ball into the swash, along with loctite this time, and found that the threaded hole is stripped.   

I swiped the swash from my E7 since it's down, waiting for parts.  Saturday night I was flying it again and near the end of my first tank I was bringing it down for a landing.  About 15 feet off the ground it just started spinning out of control.  I immediately hit TH.  It stopped spinning and I was able to auto it down.  Even though it was a hard landing, not a thing broke!  As I stood there looking at it I could see that the tail pitch control lever arm was just hanging there on the end of the control rod.  Back to the bench to go over the whole helicopter and make sure everything now has loctite....

Flew yesterday and had zero issues!  Hopefully I still have one lucky save in the bank. 

[flyalan]

Rodeny,
On the tail pitch control arm, be sure to put a lock nut on the bolt once its intalled into the tail box.  I missed that one time myself. 
 
Cheers
Alan
 
 

[Chris Sexton]

Well Rodney, you certainly are having some fun aren't you .

While in BHam, I lent my night N5c to Kevin to download some of the images from my night blades. While he had it, one of the guys helping him noticed that two of my motor mount bolts were backed out 1/4 of an inch!  That would not have ended well.

Major wake up call for me.  I went over the entire heli and found several screws that has worked them selves loose.  Cleaned them all up and re-loctited them all. 

Glad the damage was minor, but I am curious what is going on with that swash. Was your N5c kit new or used?

[flyalan]

I guess we should all take a page from general aviation pilot training.  The first thing I was taught was how to do a thorough walk around inspection of the aircraft.  For whatever reason we don't do this consistently with our models and we see the results.  I am including myself in that BTW
Maybe a preflight checklist is in order
 
Alan
 
 

[Rodney Kirstine]

Rodeny,
On the tail pitch control arm, be sure to put a lock nut on the bolt once its intalled into the tail box.  I missed that one time myself. 
 
Cheers
Alan

That is what's crazy, there was a lock nut on there because I had looked at that previously.  I went ahead and used blue loctite on the screw where it goes through the bracket and then also added the lock nut.

Chris, I bought it used.

[bmclaurin]

Preflight checklist? Meh. Too lazy for that, and I am one of the worst offenders. Yesterday, I walked out to the flight line with my idling N5c with almost no fuel in the tank...doh!! Made for a fairly embarrassing walk back to the bench. 

[flyalan]

Preflight checklist? Meh. Too lazy for that, and I am one of the worst offenders. Yesterday, I walked out to the flight line with my idling N5c with almost no fuel in the tank...doh!! Made for a fairly embarrassing walk back to the bench. 

I will admit I haven't done that one yet...Yet!
I have placed the heli in the takeoff area and forgotten to connect the main pack... The lack of beeps form the ESC should have been a dead give away


Cheers
Alan