A couple of evenings ago, we had great weather here and the sun was getting ready to set, not much wind and the sun had retreated behind the trees surrounding my house/airfield. I decided to take my modified Hawk Sky up for a quick early evening flight to test a couple of mods I had made. I noticed before the flight that my 30 AMP ESC was acting flaky and cut power on the ground. However, I decided that I didn't have a good battery connection so I reseated the battery and all seemed well. However, a couple of rolls and loops later I had brought the plane around to my eleven o'clock and all of the sudden everything quit, "dead stick." I was probably only 75 ft up or so, however the plane kept circling to the left as I had applie some left rudder coming back towards me.
I couldn't believe my eyes....the plane kept circling and circling closer and closer to the row of trees on the left of the airfield. I just knew that it would lose altitude before getting there, but I was wrong! It circled about five times and gracefully went into mid-top of one of the tress there. Fortunately, it literally floated in there so no damage whatsoever. By that time it was getting late and daylight was fading fast. I decided to wait until the next day to attempt retrieval.
Fortunately I have access to a "push pole" which is basically a telescoping pole that a lot of cable guys use to run cable in the attic or drop ceiling of office buildings. If you ever have a crash and get stuck in a tree, one of these comes in VERY handy. Also fortunate was the fact that I wasn't that high up and the base of the tree had a really nice sturdy branch that came off the trunk just about right for leaning a ladder against it to get access to the plane. So I modified the push pole using some strapping tape and a bent up clothes hanger so that I could loop around the end of the plane that I could see and pull it towards me. Here are a couple of pics of the setup:
Leaned the ladder against the branch which was grown up with a mass of vines and other vegetation which made it sturdier.
This is a pic of the end of the "push pole" which I taped a clothes hanger to so that I could loop the tail of the plane and pull it down.
Really the only damage that came from the crash was from the retrieval itself. In looping the clothes hanger around the tail of the plane and pulling, I broke off the vertical stabilizer at the base and bent it over to one side of the horizontal stabilizer. Fortunately, this was fixed with just a bit of strapping tape and it was as good as new.
As Dave Herbert a.k.a. "Nightflyyer" says, "Every crash is a lesson." Don't fly something that you are unsure about and that might be a potential problem. In my case I should have got to the bottom of the flaky ESC to begin with before taking to the air. Even though I didn't crash at the hands of the controls, I still allowed it to happen.
Fortunately, all is good and the Hawk Sky lives to see another day and flight!
