I am the person who won the Ultra Stick 60 at the raffle in February 07.  I finally got the plane assembled and ready to fly about a week before the open house.  I was really happy to finally have it ready.  I went to the field on Saturday to test fly the plane, hoping to have it ready for the open house.  I had problems...  It flew as if it was terribly nose heavy.  Well, I took it back home, rebalanced it, and went back to the field on Sunday morning to try again.  Lee Powell happened to be there and with a little coaxing, I convinced him to give it a try. 

All was great!!  So, I refueled the plane and excitedly took off.  After one lap around the field, the plane took a nice steady flight off over the horizon..... :-(  I was bummed to say the least and I'm sure that some of you can imagine the feeling of the loss of control as well as wondering if you will find the plane and what the condition would be.  Well, after about an hour and a half of walking in the fields to the west of the flying site, I found it!  Boy was I relieved to see it in the condition that it was in.  The only real damage was the landing gear was torn off when it landed in the waist high grain field.  WHAT LUCK!  I had figured that my on board battery had died, and when I got back to the field and checked it, I was sure that was the problem.  But after getting back home and starting repairs, I found out what the real problem was...

I guess that the vibration made the lead break off during flight.  It could have been way worse, I wish that I had my camera when I found it so I could have some pics of the damage and what it took to repair the plane.  Silly me, I didn't even take any pics of the plane during repairs.  I thought it would be fun to share the experience with all of you.  Hope you don't have this same experience, it wasn't all that fun when it happened, but, looking back, is kind of funny. 

Oh, I did replace the battery in the plane with a brand new Leptron pack that will more efficiently power the (7) all digital servos that the plane has installed.

Happy flying!!