After two crashes that required some minor repairs, and with only 7 minutes of actual flying time on the clock, I could finally fly my Tundra again after exchanging the propeller for a plastic one (as opposed to the original Carbon fiber version).
There were still 10 days left of my summer vacation, so I had good hopes to be able to learn to fly some more in the following week-and-a-half. I limit myself to early mornings, and evenings just before sunset for two reasons: there's hardly any wind, and hardly any people around. After a couple of slow circuits with flaps 1, my confidence grew. I decided to try one with flaps 0. It all looked pretty much like I was in control. The plane flew a lot faster, but I keept altitude and directional control. Or at least, so I thought...
When on base leg, ready to turn final, I suddenly lost sight of my plane! It had dissappeared behind trees i thought it would be in front of. So all i could do is level my wings as best i could (without seeing the plane, so a "best guess"), and try to outclimb the trees. No such luck. "Pok", "schchchchch...."... I hit a pine tree near the top, and the plane dove down into the crown of the tree. Stuck with it's nose down, leading edges on two different branches, some 20 meters up from the ground!
I was never going to get to it! I could not (and dared not) climb the tree, and throwing sticks and stones did not help a thing. I just did not manage to throw that high!
When I got back later in the evening, I heard the LiPo alarm tell me that the battery was about to go flat. I tried to get it out with the help of my tennis playing brother in law. We hit tennis balls up the tree, swung a pad lock on a string towards it, but to no avail. We tried day after day, for pretty much the remainder of the holiday, but still no luck.
After careful consideration, I decided I would give it a try to hoist the plane up with my GDU Byrd drone. I created an "X" between the feet of the drone, and created a sort of a hook on that X from electrical wire (the solid kind). I wanted to try out the construction first, to see if that hook could be released when the wire would get caught in the tree. When I had tested that at a lower bush, with positive result, I flew up to the plane to see if the 2.5 meters of wire would be long enough. And that looked OK! With a proper hook that weighs a bit, the wire would be stretched a bit better towards a straight line. I was confident I had a good shot at rescueing my Tundra!
So after thi "proof of concept", I went back to charge the drone's battery so that the rescue mission would be with a fully charged battery. Unfortunately, it started to rain during the charging, so I had to postpone the mission to the morning of the last day of my holiday. I would have liked to have some more margin in time, but flying in the rain did not sound like a good idea.
So I went back the next morning ... to find the plane gone!
Someone else must have been able to free it, because it could not have grotten out of the tree by itself. It had been sitting there for ten days, surviving a westerly storm, and an easterly storm, while only setteling better in those branches. No way it would have gotten out by itself! But what to do now?
I had heard of a "for sale" Facebook group of the camping, so I decided to post a "missing" add on there. But first I had to join the group; an admin had to approve my membership. Man, does that take long, if you are waiting for it! Meanwhile, we started packing for our trip back home, since our holiday was over... at three in the afternoon I got accepted to the group, and started writing my add right away.
Much to my surprise: within half an hour, someone showed up wit my plane! It was pretty banged up, and partially taken apart, but all parts were still there, so glue and tape should get me flying again!
It was a tree surgion that had taken it upon him to spend a couple of hours on that rainy Saturday to liberate my plane from it's predicament.
The damage to the plane was overseeable:
Some plastic parts that should be attached to the wings, were attached to the fuselage, the rudder had broken off, a tip of the right-hand elevator was broken off, the main landing gear was removed, there were some dings and dents, but it could all be glued back together again (the rudder needed new hinges to glue it to). Unfortunately, the battery had died beyond repair - too deeply discharged. And after better examination, it became clear that both flaps servos had burnt through, so they had to be replaced as well.
But I had my plane back! And within three hours of the end of my holiday too! 😃 So off to the workshop, and start the repairs.
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