MODEL AIRPLANE CRASH FOTOS

All right, it happens to us all. If I show you mine, will you show me yours?

If you have a photo you'd like to submit for this page, please e-mail it to me with the subject "Crash". All submissions will remain anonymous unless otherwise specified.

This Page Last Updated 2/14/16
(Click on any of the thumbnail images to view a larger picture.)

Please Note: If you submit a photo, I will post your e-mail address so others can contact you, unless you specifically ask me not to post it.

"Gilbert's Disaster!"

"Took me to long to build and too short of a time to crash..."

"Think you might like this one. Attempted a loop after a long dive - Spirit lawn darted from ~200 feet Aside from the wing... only hurt the rudder servo..."

"In the upper image is my Hobbico Extra 300S AWARF with Saito .80 four stroke using a Futaba FM Radio (not that that had anything to do with it). Fun index=high.

The lower image is of fellow JMRC club member's James' Sig Four Star 60 with 25% enlarged tail and other performance enhancing mods, YS 91AC running a 15x8 APC. Using JR 4131 and 517 servos. Fun index=high.

We were in the air at the same time, both enjoying a Saturday morning at the flying field when WHAP; we hit! I was on the downline coming out of a tailslide while James was flying across the sky setting up for his next maneuver when, to the best of our determination, my wing sliced his tail off.

The initial damage had my wing separating from the fuse causing the Extra to go straight in (I did have the fore-thought to kill the engine), while James' now tail-less Four Star continued in a graceful arc across the sky until plunging into the rain-softened ground. The damage seen in the photos is the resulting impact damage. Both aircraft have probably seen their last days in the skies."

I don't feel so bad now. Learned some lessons that day!
1. Land your plane as soon as possible if your muffler falls off.
2. Don't try to do anything fancy (like a loop) after the aforementioned occurs, your engine may stall.
3. When you're dead sticking it back in (after doing something that stupid), make sure you have enough altitude to get over that tree line.
4. If you can't get over the tree line, don't try to fly through it.

"I shot this with a camcorder (1/4000 sec) at the "Pop" Curtis Memorial fly-in in Spring of 1998 (y2k compatible), and used a Snappy to extract the frames. It had rained over 6 1/2 inches the night before (oh, and a little tornado), hence the lake. At least it wasn't me this time!"

(This is a 6 picture crash sequence - excellent quality. Click on the thumbnail at left to see all 6 frames.)

"I have photos of this plane before I had a 30+ MPH impact with an aged Oak...Was just testing out a new hi-start and it performed rather welll... but a combination of sudden high winds - and dumb thumbs had the plane racing past the side of a building; I got arround the corner just in time to see the results...

(It *will* fly again...; Just have to replace a few missing pieces...)"

"Thought you might enjoy these pics of Mac Hodges' 17ft B-29. As you may know, this plane is still around and it flies awesome (that is, with Mac at the sticks...). The, er, "landing" photos are from the second flight of this bird, I believe, back in '93. I was standing beside Mac with the camera at the time. The flight was really smooth (even with the 20mph crosswind, blowing out from the crowd - but not caused by the crowd, mind you) until about fifteen seconds after takeoff. The left main gear refused to retract. After some aerobatics(!), the plot thickened when the left dual-wheel assembly fell off. Then, on a looow pass, #4 engine signed off. As Mac was turning onto final, #3 engine also went into early retirement. Things subsequently got a bit more interesting to us spectators, not to mention what must have been going on in Mac's head. I moved behind Mac at this juncture. He brought the flaps down, angled it towards the runway, and bellied 'er in (except, of course, for that sturdy aluminum tube sticking down from the left wing...). Note nacelle making its own way. The plane was flying again in about two weeks!"

"Before, and well after photos."

http://home.sol.no/~ksandal/

I have a "before" shot of this plane in my foto gallery. This amazing model has a web page dedicated to it. You can see some pictures of it before the crash, a construction history, and there's lots of technical information on Super Guppies there if you're interested:

http://www.sure.net/~darens/

"I would like to submit 2 crash photos - one is after a midair collision with a Great Planes Easy Sport and a Northeast Aerodynamics Trainair 40. The other one is a picture of 3 pylon racers - the black one crawled up the back of the green one - cutting it in half, and the silver one just crashed as he was watching the others hit."

"The model is a 73" span scratchbuilt that I made without plans , it crashed on my first flight due to a engine out, caused by the tanks being a tad too high above the inverted spraybar (my excuse anyway). More details at http://www.hard.net.au/~incoll/twin2.htm"

"The model is now flying again and I take particular care getting both motors running just right before each flight, The thing is sooo fast, that it still intimidates me."

Before you ask, none of these are mine. We had a real bad day out at the flying field last week. Planes were falling of the sky like ducks at an NRA picnic. The final toll was something like six crashes. I felt like a ghoulish cub reporter at an airliner crash site running around snapping shots of these things.

"This photo is of my father's cub after some massive radio interference (so he says!) after analysis the battery pack was damaged and appeared to be dead. It was the first flight of his new Saito 56, unfortunatly some 5 inches of hard ground bent a pushrod and broke the needle valve. The plane accelerated to full throttle prior to nose diving."

If you have a photo you'd like to submit for this page, please e-mail it to me with the subject "Crash". All submissions will remain anonymous unless otherwise specified.