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      03-10-2012, 10:53 AM   #45
mike the snake
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Drives: 135i
Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: Sonoma County, CA.

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Lots of landing mishaps. If you watch some of the vids, landing is always basically a controlled crash. Usually, with flaps and skill, we can land the planes without issue, but it doesn't always work out perfectly.

No real accidents yet (knock on wood) as it wouldn't be pretty.

Crashes happen, usually the plane blows up in the air, usually from flutter or structural failure, radio failures happen too. The airframes see 50-60 constant G's, and up to 100G's. Occasionally pilot error will plant a plane deep into the ground. Turbulence and wind rotors can wrap planes straight into the ground before you can react.

Years ago, in a crash with a small (80" span) plane, I split a basketball sized rock in half, and the fuse went another 2 feet into the ground. The crazy thing was, the rock was IN the ground, the ground was pushed out where the rock was, with the nose 2 feet below the rock. It took an hour to dig it out!

It would be near impossible to actually aim and hit something for demonstration at these speeds.
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