What has been your most expensive crash?

[Beth Ashby Moderator]

Everyone has had a crash (or a few) in their flying careers, so what's been the most expensive crash you've had? Was it a prized plane? and did you re-build one?

Discuss below!

[The Wright Stuff]

Not very impressive but I'll stick a 0-£100 on the board just to get us started. It was a Speed Air that I lost in a mid air collision. The wing fluttered down in more-or-less one piece but the fuse was reduced to matchsticks.

I replaced it with a Super Air...

[Geoff S]

Mine was my GP Super Stearman which went dead stick just after take off on the maiden. I thought I had sufficient height to land back on the patch but the tip stall crushed both wings. I bought enough wood to make some new wings but when one came up on eBay with decent wings I bought it and used the wings on mine. Still needed quite a lot of work and it took me a couple of years to get the motivation. So I now have a spare fuselage.

In the end the real culprit proved to be the Mackay electronic ignition for the 30cc petrol engine which was intermittent. I didn't find out until I tried to get the engine running after the rebuild but a replacement HK sourced ignition unit cured the unreliability. It's still a bit of a hanger queen because of its size and the field assembly time but it's a pretty model.

So you see, even a dedicated electric flyer can sort out liquid fuelled models ... eventually

Geoff

[David P Williams]

All the helicopter ones.........

[Martin Harris - Moderator]

Depends if you put any monetary value on building time...

[David Davis]

Senior Telemaster ARTF, the one seen in my avatar but fitted with an electric motor and 6S LiPo at the time. I'd handed the transmitter to a pilot who I thought was competent enough to fly the model. He wasn't! The starboard wing ripped off and all I could sell was the wing and tailplane to someone who already had an STM! More than £400 worth smashed to bits! It was partly my fault as it was rather windy at the time and I had handed him the transmitter when the model was in a shallow dive, downwind and with one wing low! Since then I've never handed my transmitter to anyone unless I was sure that they were a better pilot than me! In all other cases it's been buddy-box only!

[Colin Carpenter]

Without doubt a Heim Bell 222 helis that cost SWMBO a grand in total for my 40th birthday. It was painted in a scheme provided by Bell UK. It went in at the annual Morley day in Bristol in about 1991 when the signal was lost on approach for the final flight of the day. It was in more pieces than a jigsaw ! However, I won a trophy for the best scale helicopters on the day ! I rebuilt it and got a car resprayer to give it a coat of high build white to hide all the joins . Sold it for £450 . Went over to the new fast electric boating then as I really lost heart !

Colin

[Fraser Daly]

I crashed a synergy n9 helicopter a few years back, even the crankshaft on the engine was bent. It threw a tail rotor blade grip at about 100 feet, it was wrecked even before it hit the deck 😣 I gave it up for a few years after that

[Martyn K]

As I am almost a 100% home/scratch builder then I do not cost my own time - if I did - at say £8 per hour then you could add easily £500 to £1000 to the write off cost.

Also assumed that anything that is reusable is not included.

With that in mind then my most expensive crash (the Concept write off last year) has been about £75.

Martyn

[Speedster]

Crash due to high speed flutter.

Only a few ​extensions wires survived.

Cheers Soren

[Stuart Z]

T'was a DSM Joker with an OS61 rear exhaust tuned pipe etc. Those were the days!

Still have the retracts, the rest wasn't worth a lot after I dug it out of the hole.

[Bob Cotsford]

Probably a YT Katana that landed flat out on the 9th green after a NiMh pack failed. Or maybe the Jabberwok? Both about the same monetary loss but the Jab had a lot more work invested in it.

Reading the above posts, I'm glad I only fly fixed wing!

[David perry 1]

Oh man,amazing model. I had an ASP 108 in mine as I watched it dive in vertically. Superb plane though, loved every second with mine.

D

[Dave Hopkin]

To corrupt a recent advertising slogan.....

Model £150

Electrics £100

Ego.............. priceless

[Don Fry]

Broken, more space in the shed. They hurt at the time, but are as ephemeral as a mayfly. Get used to it. If you ain't got the bottle to launch it, dolls houses are good.

[Dave Bran]

My wife looks at the overloaded shed, garage and one bedroom and says I don't crash enough.......................

As I buy cheap and fly hard, the costs in money of a loss is insignificant.

What is worst is when you lose one and its not possible to bottom out why, the engineer in me needs to know.......................

[Don Fry]

Dave you are right, I recently did a good one, and I am coming to the (unbelievable ) conclusion, I switched the transmitter off.

But I can never be sure.

Edited By Donald Fry on 27/07/2016 19:43:47

[Martin Harris - Moderator]

Having witnessed just that, I can believe it!

[Josip Vrandecic -Mes]

If the account? My biggest financial losses were at the time of dealing with the FAI -FF- F-1-C, 30+ years ago, when I'm trained in preparation for national and international competition in this expensive class. Every year I broke one model in stage of settings, all those who is familiar with the F-1-C know what I'm saying. For information, the model from those time , cost of today's abt 500 pounds.

[Tony Cook]

Early days of stretching the aerobatic envelope, fast inverted down the strip, then pulled up! Don't ask me why.. Acro wot (kit) New ASP46 JR Gear about 250 quid...mates helped me pick up the confetti in a couple of bin bags. S'funny still carry a bin bag in the boot !! think its one of those bags for life (ironic) lol!