Injured Seagull Arising Star

by Kevin Daigle (forum member 'Spartacus')
(Dawson Creek, BC, Canada)

My Seagull Arising Star gas plane (follow this link to see it pre-crash. Unfortunately it doesn't look that good anymore.
A word of advice for all you beginners out there, for what it's worth. Check your receiver battery voltage before take off even if your transmitter battery has a good charge on it.

I assumed that since the battery indicator on my transmitter showed a good charge on its battery that my receiver battery would be ok too. "Wrong!"
Now that I think about it and how much more of a load is put on the receiver battery compared to the transmitter battery, it makes total sense.

Anyways, to the point...
I was on about my third flight of the evening and the plane response felt a bit sluggish but I wasn't quite sure what it was. I decided to land the plane and did one more loop before lining up for my approach.
About 7/8 way through the loop the plane stopped responding. The one saving grace is that I was over a hay field and the hay was about 3 1/2 feet tall. It went in at about a 10-15% angle and at least 1/2 throttle. One side of the fuselage broke right off all the way back to the servo compartment. The engine broke completely away.
I basically rebuilt from the servo compartment forward (good practice!) Now, from just in front of the rear wing dowels forward, my plane is white - the only colour I had...

Don't think I'll be making that mistake again. Anyways while I was doing the rebuild I purchased my second plane. A Tribute 36. Driven by an OS 46AX and a Spektrum DX6i 2.4GHz. This plane is a blast and a bit scary.

Anyways...batteries, batteries, batteries, don't forget to check your batteries!!