I have a couple of highstart stories:
It was 1985 and I had completed my first RC airplane. It was a Drifter II and I couldn't have been happier. The radio I had was a 2 channel car radio on an airplane frequency. Rudder was on the right stick and elevator was on the left. Anyway, after a couple of flights by an experienced friend and a couple of flights by me and a couple of weekends later, I noticed the rudder was a little out of trim. Being 12 years old at the time, I didn't think too much of it until after it's next launch. The plane left my hand, went about 15 feet up, did a hamerhead stall turn and plowed into the ground. It destroyed the nose all the way to the leading edge of the wing. I spent the entire next week making the fuselage look exactly like it did when I finished it. On its first launch after I repaired it (I never bothered to straighten that rudder out) the same thing happened again! A friend took the plane home with him, made the nose bullet proof and straightened out the rudder. I had several flights on that plane and I vow that when I stop moving I'll own another one.
My second story happened just south of Atlanta, GA in 1998. I had just finished a 2M Banshee that had open class stabs on it (I didn't know they were open class stabs until I saw another Banshee and wondered why my kit came with them). Anyway, I was too cheap/lazy to join the local club so I decided to go out on my own. I found a field in back of a school that was the exact length of my highstart and infested with red ants. Long story short, I didn't have enough pull on the highstart to properly launch the plane and didn't care because my hands and ankles were being bitten by red ants. I don't know why I thought everything would be better if I tried to launch the plane. The plane went up about 20 feet or so and stalled. The highstart somehow had enough pull to drive the airplane into the ground wingtip first. The only thing damaged was the right wingtip and I repiared it, moved to San Antonio, TX and had dozens of flights with that plane.
Morals of the stories:
1. Do a thorough preflight before each launch!
2. If you're being bitten by red ants: 1, don't launch because the ants will probably keep biting you while your plane is in the air and 2, destroy every red ant mound in sight!
Mike
Las Vegas, NV
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