I really should have quit before my last flight of the Radian.
I took her out for a couple of flights this morning from a hilltop without the FPV rig. I was flying old-school (by looking at the plane) and had a couple of great long flights.
I came home and thought I should get one more flight (since I had a full battery) but this time using the FPV rig.
I set up my FPV tripod ground station, turned on the camera and DVR and let it loose outside my house. It was about 30 seconds out when I got transfixed with watching the monitor and realized that it was placed poorly for me to look at it and occasionally look up to see the plane.
To fix that situation, I grabbed the tripod with one hand and was moving it when I remembered that I was simultaneously flying (or was supposed to be flying) an airplane.
Had a panic moment, looked up and found the plane hurtling toward the ground at full throttle, tried to get control but it was too late and it augured in to one of only patches of boulders in the hills near my house. (Not that it really mattered that I hit the rocks... at the speed it was traveling, it didn't really matter where it crashed.) It was an ugly sound and I saw a shower of parts. It was captured by the onboard HD camera (an #808 v16) and the SD video downlink on the DVR.
Learning from watching my buddy crash last week, I remembered to carry a bag (i.e. a body bag) up the hill to bring back the carnage. The splash zone was surprisingly large. I found pieces 15-20 feet from ground zero.
The wings and the horizontal stabilizer survived but the fuselage was destroyed beyond belief. The small HD camera survived as did the RC gear (ESC, motor, receiver, servos and stabilizer). The 5.8 Ghz transmitter and FPV antenna are toast as is the SD video camera -- I basically thrashed the FPV portion of the system.
Every crash is an opportunity to buy new stuff!
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