T-28D Crash!

[WJCJR1]

All not happy! If I crash and it's my fault I am disappointed but if I crash at no fault of mine I am not a happy person in any way.

Today I flew the T-28D and about 30 seconds after takeoff I rolled and then turned into a rolling dive at about 250'. Immediately I lost all contact with the T-28D, I watched helplessly as I could not pull out of the dive. I tried until she hit the ground. Right before losing contact I had reduced throttle to about 1/4 and throttle and everything stayed at their settings until she hit. I could not roll in any direction, throttle down or up and elevator was not there either, complete loss of contact.

The plane is wrecked and I am really mad.

When I got to the plane first thing I looked for was to see if the receiver lost power and this was not the case as the Red light was still solid. If there was a short in the wiring or fauly conncetion of Low Voltage the receiver would lose contact with the TX, then the red light is supposed to blink reporting a failure. I took pictures of this and the rest of the plane and plan to send a letter to HH. I believe the problem is within the DX5e.

Damage is costly! The motor, which was torn from the plane, is packed with mud. I do mean packed and will need a full tear down to clean out and see if it is any good. The E-Flite 60A ESC is almost snapped in two as the 4S battery went through the foam fuselage like a butter knife and smashed the ESC into the firewall, the capacitors on the side of the ESC are bent about 60* backwards. Receiver still works, not sure I am comfortable with it given the nature of the accident. All servos are working fine. Plane hit so hard the ailerons on both sides ripped at their creased hinges. Fuselage is a mess and of course motor mount tore in two.

So the Power15 enhanced T-28D is no more. I will be sending a letter to Horizon Hobby and I suspect they will want to have everything sent in if they were to replace anything. Or so I do hope because this had nothing to do with an error on my end and I for sure hope they warranty their equipment against damages caused from faulty equipment.

BTW my wife had the camera in her hand and was just about to burn a video when this went down. Wish she would've had the camera on just so we would've had the whole event on 'film'. When I told her I had no contact she was as surprised as I as we both watched the plane come down as I frantically tried all imputs to absolutely no response.

Pictures getting resized right now and soon to come.

Wayne

[Radioflyer]

Dang Wayne... sorry to hear that man. I hope Horizon takes care of you.

Blessings,

Jay

[herk1]

Ouch! Was that the Pro ESC with switch-mode BEC?

[WJCJR1]

Yes it was that one. http://www.e-fliterc.com/Products/Default.aspx?ProdID=EFLA1060 All the parts I used for this Power15 upgrade were more than adequate and of E-Flite's good name.

I am assuming a TX issue although it could have been the RX but I am uncertain as I am not a professional electronics diagnostic person.

The LIPO seems fine although I do have it outside segregated to see if she's damaged.

I sent the letter to HH with a link here to the pictures so they can decide what avenue they want to pursue, if any. I never did turn in my claim on the fried elevator servo the day of maiden, see the review of the T-28D, but I have heard HH's customer service os more than generous so I expect the same sort of experience many others have had.

Wayne

[ATIS]

wayne,

Sorry for the lose but not sure if it was the TX or the RX... fail safe for the RX (if lost signal/voltage lose) would have been NO throttle...as you bond the RX with the throttle stick at zero.

I hate to say it but I think she is over powered for that type of manuever with stock servos. A nose dive at WOT (yes you powered back but she was already smoking) and the added weight od the power 15 and 4s lipo probably caused her to hit a velocity where the the servos and pushrods lacked the strength to move the control surfaces.

If I miss read your post let me know. I keep seeing these posts of los signal/control and I have only had it happen twice...right after I damaged my aerial on the DX7 and once I replaced it I have never had an issue. With 48 planes all on AR6100's (well two are on AR500) if the issue was RX problems I should have taken a hit at some point from a mathmatical stand point.

[WJCJR1]

I have not had a loss of control except for today and when the batteries were making an inadequate contact and she flew away.

The speed was going horizontally was not phenomenal then when I rolled in to turn back inverted all was good and I turned her to 1/4 throttle from about 2/3 throttle. When I rolled her and began in the inverted dive the energy it took to do this roll and dive backwards at 1/4 throttle shed quite a bit of speed then that's when I lost control and she went straight down from about 250' rolling the whole way.

I have pulled some seriously fast high-G meneuvers with this plane and except for one time coming out of a flat spin did I ever have trouble recovering otherwise she has always responded with ease and immediately at that.

I would completely understand that my time was up if I had pulled a full throttle dive and cracked on the elevator to no response but there was no elevator response, no aileron response not throttle. Absolutely nothing. It felt exactly liek that fly-away when the TX was turning on and off absolutely nothing.

I am very thankful no one was in the path of the plane today the thud she made was frightfully loud, straight in it was. The soft ground from the frshly harvested field is the only thing that saved her from crumpling to nothing and for sure destroying the motor. I am unsure about the motor still thugh hihgly caked with mud and shaft appears to be bent to the naked eye. Of course the prop didn't break though so I saved one thing...

SO no Full throttle diving today and at point of loss of contact nothing crazy was happening. Only had her in the air maybe 30 seconds when this happened.

I was just pondering/wondering do you or have you heard of people rebinding their RX's to their TX's? There have been and were no troubles with the pre-flight but I did note it took a bit longer than normal for the TX/RX to connect. Nothing outstanding but I did unplug the battery from the ESC once and recycle the TX as it doesn't usually take long to conncet and today I waited about 10 sec., unhooked the primary battery shut off the TX, turned TX back on then plugged in the plane and she hooked up in about 6-8 seconds. Usually it's within a 3-4 seconds so I did note that longer 10 second or longer time when I recycled everything and then the longer 6-8 second hook up the second go around.

Wayne

[ATIS]

interesting... I wonder if you broke the cleavis at the control surface (elevator) as it is plastic and may have finally given in after all the previous hard manuevers...or striped a servo. Was the RX flashing when you reconnected the lipo? that would be loss of signal/voltage.

[brianfp_400]

Really sorry about your crash. Good luck with HH. Since you modified their stock plane with oversize motor, ESC, and Lipo, they might say the warranty is null. Can't really talk about your Spektrum gear since I fly Futaba. Probably would not loose all inputs at once from servo failures, highly unlikely they all stripped at once. And if power was still present on the ground, it was not loss of electrical. That leaves xmitter failure or rcvr loss of signal. Do you have another rcvr to test your radio with ?

Been flying the same power configuration in mine for a year and have never lost a servo or a control surface hinge or clevis.

[ATIS]

Brian,

The issue with signal loss is the AR RX's would go to the 'safety" settings... which would have been control surfaces flush and no motor. The fact the motor ran till it hit the deck tells me that signal loss is unlikely.

[apprentice1]

Sorry to hear about the crash. BTW, I can't see the pictures, matter of fact I can't see 90% of the pic's on this site? help?

[WJCJR1]

I was kind of 'shocked' when I wrote my post yesterday. SO to further clarify the condition the servos are all good, all connections are good no broken clevises.

The impact was straight in so no pretzeled up or messed up servo horns or rods so no guessing there.

I am going to turn her on tonight and see what happens.

My safety was 1/8th throttle, slight right. Would explain the slow right hand spiral to the ground with motor running.

Really feel I lost the TX signal for some reason.

I can see HH saying the craft was modified no joy but about a specific item which can be proven it was hte cause of the crash I would expect replacement of items damaged due to... I can see both sides but want to find out WHAT happened and see a satisfactory resolve.

Wayne

[ATIS]

Did you range check her?? What radio are you using?

[tkrahlin]

I watched helplessly as I could not pull out of the dive. I tried until she hit the ground... The plane is wrecked and I am really mad.Wayne

Dang! Sorry Wayne! That was a bad MamaJama of a plane!

There are few feelings more sickening than this. I've watched three Mustangs and PT-19 go down like this. Now, I just want to throw this out there, but I haven't had a problem since I switched to Castle Creations ESC (Thunderbirds).

Just yesterday I had a blast flying two batteries through the PT-19 and two more through the Mustang.

The Mustang has a 36-amp Thunderbird behind a Park-480 spinning an 11/7e prop. The last battery through her was a 2100x20c TP ProLite flying nearly WOT the whole 15-minutes. When I landed her the 2100 was hot and puffy, but the motor and ESC were warm.
.

[WJCJR1]

Never puffed a battery before.

Apprentice1, Ken, we will work on your viewing issue. I am sorry this has happened. First things first though throw-out your old Favorites or Shortcut to this site. Then type in www.HorizonRcFlyers.com (http://www.HorizonRcFlyers.com) and rebookmark to your favorites. Some had trouble with cookies not working properly since they had the old link from the previous site before we went V.bulletin. Other than that I will check all your settings, please report back.

ATIS other than my normal every day pre-flight I did not range check. I didn't even mention my pre-flight it is a habitual routine that is so normal you don't even think of it. I checked all surfaces and throttle trim setting, bumped the throttle setting up a few clicks above nominal and again checked all surfaces moving properly. This is after getting hook-up with the RX and getting the go-ahead solid red-light which you saw still glowing in the picture.

I am going to do a couple plug-ins tonight and see if I lose connection or anything goofy with the same transmitter but with the Apprentice. Still a AR500 RX but a different one nonethless. I am expecting nothing really but want to check it anyway.

I do not buy the performance issue for a second, not because it couldn't happen under the correct condition but in my current state at moment of loss I was not going hard nor was the plane acting sickly prior or being pushed anywhere near how far I know the plane can go. I do agree if you went down full throttle with that power and yanked on the lever she may not deflect very well and could cause a similar scenario but this was nothing of that sort.

Now could the servos be getting overloaded and over-amping that giant ESC, I am not sure. This could be a possibility but I would need to see measurements as this 60A ESC is designed to deliver gobs of power to the receiver thus to run the numerous servos expected from a 60A ESC carrying plane. I was before this happened doing a large floppy roll using all servos, was not running harder than 2/3 throttle so nothing nuts.

Starting my quest now,
Wayne

[WJCJR1]

OK plugged in T-28D just now, servos hummed ESC makes connection turns solid red. After being lit for about 20 seconds light goes out NO CONNECTION! No response no nothing. After about 15 seconds of this no response light back on full control. I unplugged, shut down TX set up again for same trial and no connection for ~30 seconds. Redid disconnection reconnection process and cycling TX all connect all good. I did it several more times, more times I did it the faster it connected.

Could it be a connection in the TX that when cold is bad? When it is run for period of time it is good. It was in the 40*s yesterday when this happened?

I then tried the Apprentice and she hooked up great the whole time no problems. It was mimmicing the T-28D after it and the TX had been cycled several times. I placed the DX5e outside to cool down...

BTW when the RX light went black on the T-28D RX all light were on with the TX. When it turned back on same deal no visual change in battery power indicator on teh TX.

Also the Red light blinks if the RX loses power not if it loses connection. Detects lack of power issues, (brown-outs).

More to come for sure.

Wayne

[WJCJR1]

Second trial 41 seconds she dies on the T-28D.

Third trial on Apprentice RX goes black after 13 seconds stays black NO CONTACT for 9 seconds comes back on for 4 seconds goes black for 12 seconds I unplug.

TX is crap!

Wayne

[tkrahlin]

I know exactly how you’re feeling…

I’ve whacked trees and poles and broken planes on bad landings and takeoffs and I've always came away saying the same thing – “Boy, that was stupid, Tim!!” But, when it’s not your fault coupled with that helpless feeling, it can really mess with you. However, you sound like you got that 'investigation mindset’ going for you. So, while it may be hard to see a silver lining right now, this will ultimately make you more familiar with “how things work.” And, when all is said and done, isn’t that why we do this?

Then, when you find the problem, think back to that introduction of the old, Six Million Dollar Man TV show: "Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. We can make him better than he was before. Better… stronger… faster."

;)

[WJCJR1]

OK left the radio on for 10 minutes after my last trial. Hooked up to Apprentice and T-28D all good no losing connection. Started to believe the cold theory more now. I have TX off now and letting it cool will try trial again in 30 minutes or so.

Do feel I am onto something, last set of trials both RX's reacted the same. Can't tell me I got two bad RX's haha, good thing I wasn't flying tonight huh!

Wayne

[tkrahlin]

Back in the day doing board level diagnostics, we’d use cold in a can to spray suspected bad chips or solder joints.

What if you were to bind the RX an d TX, light em up then put the TX in the fridge while you watch the radio?
.

[WJCJR1]

After TX being off for 35 minutes issue is very clear. I have a 2 minute video with the Apprentice where the RX blinks in and out of reception mayeb 6 or 7 times. If you move the transmitter around it seems to set it off more so than not.

As with the prior tests I am leaving the TX on for a few minutes and seeing if this makes a difference.

Doing another test now,
Still blinking out for 9, 21 and 14 seconds all within a 90 second period of time. Getting worse it appears. Remember this is with the Apprentice now not the T-28D so it can not be argued the RX is damaged. Also changed batteries in Apprentice so no bad battery coudl be cited.

TX is faulty. So armed with this I warn you guys be careful.

Wayne

[ATIS]

Wayne.... have you dropped her? The aerial is a little (and I mean little) clip plug... if you dropped the TX it can become unhooked...might be worth a look inside. Also try a different lipo and see if that makes a difference, might be a cold solder connection.

[WJCJR1]

Transmitter never dropped not a scratch on her. What Lipo, in the TX? I use loose rechargeable cells. LIPO in plane has been swapped out to rule that out, No battery going out in TX or well at least the meter is not picking it up.

Wayne

[ATIS]

check the plug on the ESC... sometimes the pins push out the backside of the blue plug

[WJCJR1]

Plug is good and it's doing it on both planes and several different batteries.

Hopefully talk with HH this week and see if they say to pull the cover and take a peek.

Gotta roll right now but tomorrow I will fire up the other DX5e I have now that I have diagnosed a problem here with this one. If it does it with that one well then I am back to square one but I highly doubt this scenario.

Thanks for all your tips and help.

Wayne

[WJCJR1]

HH wrote back today and said they would like to examine the TX and diagnose the issue. It appears my responsibilty to ship it to them. HH stated to include all details as in my letter to them and to inclkude in the shipment all items I wish to have taken care of.

So far I am very pleased with this response, it mirrors the reports I generally hear from HH customer service. I plane to send the TX, Motor, ESC and a photo of the plane. I would like to just send the TX and other items listed in a DX5e box obviously plane does not fit in there.

I will inform how the rest of the process goes.

Wayne

[herk1]

The one time I had to send something back to Horizon, they didn't offer to pay for the cost of sending the bum plane back, and I thought that was kind of funny...it was defective, why should I be responsible for that cost? So I asked if they would send me a return label, and they said OK. I got a UPS prepaid return label thingy about a week later. Turns out, that's the way they operate...if you don't ask, they won't offer.

[WJCJR1]

Thank-You
Wayne

[WJCJR1]

I sent the E-Flite Power15 Motor, E-Flite 60A ESC, DX5e, AR500 RX, description of incident photos to HorizonHobby in Illinois Monday, Nov. 9. Today, Nov.13, I received a call from a Customer Service representative that all items had been received. Further this afternoon I received another call from a Service Technician representative stating all items including the plane will be replaced at no obligation to me.

I am very pleased at Horizon Hobby's customer service, response, instant service and repeated immediate communication(s). This is my very first and only dealing with Horizon Hobby Customer Service and from this expereince this is EXACTLY their reputation of a timely, respectful very appreciative company. Hats off to this company!

Wayne

[WJCJR1]

All items arrived today replaced from Horizon Hobby, except for the Power15 which is being sent in a few days due to it being backlogged. Very fast turn-around, great commnication and all is ready to go.

I however received back my original TX with an explanation nothing could be found wrong with it. I am very perplexed by this. The documented symptoms I scripture recorded earlier in this post and in a digital video are completely absent. I tried the same series of tests on my Apprentice which failed the test numerous times as well as the new RX sent with the T-28D.

Again all works flawlessly and even when the TX is chilled which was the catalyst of the problem before. I may use this TX as my trainer just because I am still very wary as the documented tests I did before proved 'something' was awry which now appears to be 'gone'.

I am bewildered and wonder if someone fixed something along the line, in the line etc., if I prove the TX worthy test after test I guess I move on and as mentioned above maybe keep it as a trainer for safety purposes but otherwise be happy and prosper.

I am very much impressed with Horizon Hobby's Customer Service. Now I can say I see first-hand why HH is known for not only a quality developer/distributor but also Customer Service matched by none in the industry.

Thank-You HH,

Wayne