Poor EDF guy...

[akent]

There is a fellow at the flying field that I have been going to for the past few Sundays.
He has several EDF jets, all beautiful. One is a Sapac, and I don't know what the rest are.

Last Sunday, in the gusts, he clipped a tree upon landing and totalled that jet.
Today, an absolutely beautiful all composite F5 (90mm fan) was coming around for a final approach. He hit the switch to lower the landing gear (which has brakes and suspension!), that was the last thing the jet heard from the radio. It took a nose dive and smacked the ground at probably 80mph. I saw parts flying over the trees. It was very ugly.
One thing that I have never witnessed, even with all of my heli crashes, is a battery so destroyed that it catches on fire.
That jet ran two 4 amp hour batteries in series. You wouldn't even have thought they were batteries! They were REALLY smashed beyond recognition, except they were smoking. No fire, but they were smoking big time. One of the fellows at the field picked em up and carried them over to the driveway and put them in a bucket filled with sand. Amazing.
Later, they poked them with a metal poker and they smoked some more. No flames.

Anyway, that was interesting and really sad for the fellow. To lose two incredible jets in so many weeks.
Another fellow later crashed his brand new Eflite composite EDF. I don't know the name of it, but it has the British flag on the tail. I clocked it at 79mph after a few passes. The F5 was hitting 115ish speeds. The Sapac was hitting 117's.

I flew my Stryker with a 6x5 prop. I don't think it's any faster with that prop....
Kent

[19000rpm]

It seems you can go a long time with no crashes and then; stuff just happens. It seems inevitable. It really has to sting to have two planes of that caliber go down in a season, much less, in a couple of weeks.

I've had one lipo fire. It was in my first PKZ Corsair last spring. Similar thing to the EDF guys story. Flying along great, every thing quits, goes nose in and then the fire. It wasn't just smoking there were flames. It turns out a motor mount screw (It should have been clipped at the factory) punctured the lipo on impact. HH replaced the plane.

The fire looked like a real shot down plane from a distance. I had mixed feelings walking over to it: Oh Crap! And, Geeze that looks cool. ;D

[Gabe]

What a bummer. I've been on the pilot's end of many plane crashes with edf's. They're bitter sweet, that's no doubt. 4 F-35's, one F-16, and yes, my Habu (once). No nearly as expensive as the jets mentioned here, but I sympathize with their pain.