A few weeks ago I crashed my beautiful 12' span Multiplex DG 300. The first flight was perfect, packed it up and went home to check everything out. It has a power 32 on 5 cells.
The following weekend I brought it out again. It took off beautifully northbound and got to about 30' altitude. It then immediately turned left towards the driveway and I fought to level it. It then started to do tight loops but would not respond to inputs. I cut the throttle but no response. I tried to give full "down" and crash it but no response. After 3 or 4 loops it crashed into the lumber yard parking lot.
Mark, Andy and I drove over and found it in the middle of an empty parking lot.
Summary of damage:
- a 2 foot section of one wingtip broke off.
- both ailerons came off.
- motor broke off. The twisted motor wires indicated the motor was spinning when it went in.
- the battery was still connected.
- the stab/elevator was still intact.
- the wood servo tray was completely loose with servos still connected to the pushrods.
- the nose was crushed, 6-8 cracks appeared along the fibreglass fuse.
- the wing joiner tubes in the fuselage came loose.
The following posts cover the repair process.
Frank
Glenn asked me yesterday how the repair was going and said I had not started. I did not want to disappoint him so started the repair today.
Thank you Glenn!!
I followed the normal post crash repair steps:
1) place the plane and the parts in a corner. It starts to repair itself. Somehow the repair is usually easier than the pieces in front of you.
2) assemble the plane so all the alignments are kept (motor trust line, incidence, etc.). Do not worry about the strength.
3) strengthen everything. I use 5 minute epoxy, microballons, fibreglass cloth, carbon cloth, wood.
4) worry about the cosmetics (covering, colouring, painting, sanding, etc.)
Frank
It will fly again.
Like you said, epoxy cures everything.