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.