Well this one goes into the S.A.D. Society of Aircraft Demolishers category. Last fall at the Huntersville NC contest I bought this plane from Sonny Williams maybe? I was mainly after the motor that was in it, beings it's a very low run time RoJett 61 or 65 can't remember at the moment, anyhow. The stab/elevator was broke as it had a car trunk lid smash it as I understand at one time but still looked like a decent enough airplane. So I bought it and brought it home. My dad showed interest in the plane it self so he decided to fix the stab/elevator and couple other minor issues and some misc paint repairs etc etc. Finally had a decent day to take it out and give it a go. Being a new plane to us and motor combo, we weren't really sure where it would want to be RPM wise so we sent it up a little rich. Dad was flying it and albeit a little slow due to rich sitting it flew pretty nice. About 2/3rds the way through the flight it flung off the header muffler. No big deal, we could see that would need a better clamp once we got back home. Sent it up again this time I'm at the controls. Still a little rich on the setting, But I could tell it was gonna be a pretty nice flying plane and about 2/3rds threw the flight it through the header muffler off again. So we decided to call it enough for the day we'll get that fixed and try again. So Today we took it out for another outing. Sent it up this time I got it set just a little to lean, Dad was at the controls and he did a few maneuvers but nothing crazy due to the lean setting and flew it out. Then we let the motor cool down and flew a couple other planes. Then decided to give it another go, sent it up again with dad at the controls this time had a perfect needle setting. Dad starts doing the pattern. Gets to the square outside loops and Something caught my eye, it looked like the wing had anhedral... I holler out hey knock it off fly level let me look at it,, Wasn't sure if it was an optical illusion due to a new unfamiliar paint scheme or if there was a problem. So he went level and did a few laps and everything looked fine. I holler out okay sorry must have been my imagination... Then he goes into an inside loop and immediately I can tell Oh @#$% its not fine, He made it just about 3/4 through the loop and the outboard wing decided it had enough and departed the airplane. Of course the rest of the bird didn't continue on very well after that and impacted the terrain and broke apart upon impact. Luckily the motor was not damaged other than a couple scuffs on a couple cooling fins on the head. But the header muffler took the brunt of the impact and its toast and so is the carbon fiber prop of course. So anyway I will be in need of a tuned pipe for this motor and a prop, Anyone have any suggestions or should I just contact Randy Smith for that? Anyone know the piston diameter of the RoJett 61 vs the 65 so I can figure out which motor I have? Unfortunately here is whats left of today's mishap as well as some of the repair progress pics from after I bought it and my dad started fixing it up. It appears the wing spars snapped and they were just a boxed in balsa design with another piece of balsa that slid into the boxes as for alignment, kinda like some ARF's I've seen. But anyways we were sad to see its demise so soon. Had trouble getting pics to post so added more in thread.
Topic: Damn, had a catastrophic wing failure (Read 1198 times)