I updated the original post to remove my unfounded rant, as the main points I had made were quoted and rebuffed already so it's there for reference. I hope nobody minds... It was pretty long winded anyway.
I also wanted to apologize to Matt for going overboard based on an incorrect evaluation of why the failure occurred. Thanks again for all of the good input and advice from everyone in this thread. Looks like at least one other owner was saved from a possible incident by finding this thread and noticing that he had not loctited / tightened the set screw in his tail shaft, so at least something good came out of it anyway...
The E5 is back together, and flew again today!
It took the crash exceedingly well, and is apparently extremely strong. The frame savers worked perfectly, and a couple of the aluminum frame spacers bent taking the brunt of the loads and saving the main frames from damage. The main shaft bent slightly, but surprisingly the feathering shaft was fine (hit with power off for over a second, so no real headspeed left...) The top and middle main bearings were gonners; bottom one was fine. A little heat from the heat gun and they came out easily enough.
Broke the front battery tray, but all electronics lived including the banana-d battery, which is amazing. Overall not too bad a rebuild considering the fall from 40-ish feet onto a hard grass softball field, nose first. Any Align model would probably have been a re-kit (based on my personal experience with them anyway.)
Merry Christmas / Happy Holidays to all. Hope you all get the toys you ask (yourselves
) for ...
-Chris
