Why pre-flight checks are good…

This video was taken by Mr. Brown while we were at the Cherry Creek RC airfield (http://www.denverrceagles.org/) last week.

If you watch the video you’ll see the starboard aileron at full deflection.  The guy who flew the plane had a hard landing earlier that day and didn’t forgot to do another pre-flight control check before this flight.  I do a lot of pre-flights now mainly because I’ve crashed my share of planes making stupid mistakes.

My first famous blunder with a RC plane was from a elevator that was responding backwards, so when I pulled up, the plane actually wanted to go down.  Simple fix – you click on a reverse switch on the transmitter and you’re good to go.  Since I didn’t care to do a pre-flight check, I only realized the issue after I managed to get the plane in the air.  When I realized what I did I figured, up is down and down is up…  Got it.  Seconds later, the plane started to climb, and I instinctualy went down on the controls. Well, down was up… so the plane continued to climb and basically looped – right after take off.  Now it was pointed right at us! Death from above I thought; Clear the deck!!!  I managed to miss everyone involved, and the plane crashed.  From that point on I vowed to always make sure I check the plane before flight to help insure the control surfaces are working like they should.