Well, it has been an amazing two weeks for the Crossfire and me. As mentioned above, the outside wheel pant "exploded" on takeoff on the second flight and put two large holes in the bottom of the outside wing and one all the way through the top of the outside wing. I fixed those holes well enough that no one could tell that it had been broken. The Chroma Base basecoat/clear coat paints are just amazing!
So, it was off to the Nats with but four complete patterns on the ship. No worries; it flew extremely well right off the board and only need a tiny bit of tip weight and a bit of nose weight to come in perfectly for me. It is perhaps the easiest ship to fly well that I have ever owned.
Everything went well through the practice days. On the first day of qualifying I drew an early flight and the air was just dead and what wind was present was blowing right into an intense morning sun. I delivered an okay flight that got me a decent score, but I knew that I could do a bunch better on the second flight.
For the second round the judges moved the sun a bit higher in the sky, so that wouldn't be an issue and the winds had picked up enough to blow the turbulence away. I was primed to lay one in and had the Crossfire in line in the pits with the battery in and ready. My very good friend, Bob McDonald was due to fly two before me and he asked me to walk his handle out onto the circle and then launch for him. As I was entering the circle I heard a commotion in the pits and looked over in time to see the Crossfire flying through the air backwards! A Dust Devil had hit the pits and several planes were tossed. I knew that my Nats was probably over at that point so I just went ahead with the launching duties for Bob.
When I returned to the pits I realized that the Crossfire got the worst of it… It was broken clean in half just behind the wing and the outside wingtip was slightly crushed at the front. The other planes involved sustained only minor damage. Naturally I was disappointed and wanted to just throw in the towel at that point. I was pretty sure that this plane wasn't meant to compete at this Nats. Brett Buck had other ideas…
Brett came over to add his condolences to those of everyone else, but upon close inspection he suggested that the break was so clean that we would probably be able to glue the ship back together accurately. We met up at my motel room. Brett, Bob McDonald, Jim Aron, Will and Kevin DeMauro, Buddy Wieder and Rich Giacobone all pitched in to help reassemble the ship.
Brett came up with a great idea. We fit the fuse back together along the clean break. I took some ¾-inch wide masking tape and used four strips to hold the two pieces together. I aligned the tape carefully along the paint trim lines, and ultimately I think that this contributed greatly to the final, successful, outcome of the repair. Bret used a T-Pin to make several holes along the break line; he spaced these about 5/16-inch apart. He then applied small drops of thin CA into the holes, essentially “riveting” the break lightly so that we could do a final alignment before gluing everything permanently together. Everything seemed to be aligned properly and we did a lot of measuring to insure that fact. Then we fed thin CA into the break to make the assembly more solid. After that I sanded the clear off of the paint 2 inches on either side of the break. Bob McDonald and Buddy Wieder cut two pieces of ½-ounce glass cloth to size so that we could bridge the break on both the top and bottom of the fuselage. Bob McDonald stretched the glass out flat and smooth and I applied medium CA onto the glass and smoothed it out with my finger. After that I block sanded the glass carefully to make it even smoother. Will DeMauro made a trip to the local Hobby Lobby while all of this was going on and bought a pack of very nice brushes. I used one of them to flow a bit of the metallic brown onto the fuselage and make the fix less noticeable. Okay, it was back together, but would it fly well enough to continue competing?
Will, Kevin and I drove to the field late in the afternoon and found that it was very windy. I test flew it anyway. The Crossfire broke ground and felt just like it always did. Even the handle setting was right on! It grooved extremely well and so I figured, “What the heck, let’s go for it.” I did a wingover and the ship felt just great. I completed the pattern and landed and that’s when the adrenalin ran out and I felt just totally spent. We went to dinner…
The rest is a matter of record. I finished up one quarter point out of a Top Five berth. I doubt that I could have flown any better had the ship not been broken. I am very happy with this result.
In retrospect this one is going into the win column for me. The last competition flight at the Nats was the 31st flight on a brand new plane that had sustained two major incidents in less than 10 days. I absolutely love the way this ship flies. I can fly it at 5.6 to 5.8 second lap times and with great tension everywhere. It turns extremely well and locks on target as well or better than anything I’ve ever owned. The power system consisting of an E-Flite Power 25 motor, Castle Phoenix 45 speed control, Hyperion 4s 4,000 mAh battery and Hubin FM 9 timer worked flawlessly and produced great power. I haven’t competed at a Nats since 2004. To make it almost into the show makes me a happy guy. Needless to say, I’m going to fix this ship properly now and then I’m going to build two more of them!
My most sincere thanks go out to all who have contributed to this thread and especially to all who helped me get this bird back together and flying well. What an adventure!
Later – Bob Hunt
Topic: Electric Crossfire (Read 8560 times)
