Oh wow! What size helicopter was it? What happened?

 

Hello there. Good seeing you here.

 

All the way from France. How is the heli scene in france?

 

It was an old version of the classic Align T-Rex 450 with flybar. I was taking pictures of the sky in an open field when I heard a weird noise and next thing I knew was that I was lying on the ground bleeding a lot. Called a friend that helped me over and took me to the hospital. The heli itself was FPV flying with long range systems. We took the model as evidence to suit the pilot, but he never showed up in the end. After I recovered from the “crash” I waited nearly six months for the owner of the machine to return, but nothing happened. Then I thought, “Hey, a heli just fell down from the sky on me… This must be a sign…” I then studied a lot in the internet, fixed the helicopter, removed the FPV gear and started flying with it. This heli will always have a place within my heart, it left huge scars in the whole extension of my backn and it was the start of everything. I still fly it to this day.

 

Incredible! well that was most definitely a sighn from the helligods! I too was the victim of a trex clone - though i was wearing a heavy military jacket at the time and the blades themselves shattered on my body. I love flying - lately my life has become a bit overwhelming to get down to the field but soon - very soon i will be back with a vengeance.

Rc helis are truly enigmatic - very difficult to master and in my opinion are pure flying machines providing many points of freedom.

 

That is an amazing experience.

Its like surfing, I have had my front tooth get smash in half, my back sliced open by someone else fin, the top of my head split open by another fin, but I see those experiences as part of the fun.

Just out of curiosity, did you ever determine the identify of the hobbyist? i.e. did you ever get his name etc?

 

Hey i love surfing as well - though been a few years since i have been in the water. I busted my nose windsurfing/wave jumping (mast smashed in my face) - nearly drowned surfing some big swells at bells many years ago where my board snaped and i was held down big time. The broken nose helped make my cartilage flexible - and that helps with kickboxing as even a shin kick to my nose doesn't break it. The experiences of life! To truly know pleasure - one must know pain!

 

No, never. Although the cam was intact, there was no recording device onboard, it was just broadcasting old quality VHS like video. I tried to hunt the pilot down. I went to some local hobby shops, kept an eye on popular forums to see if there was any thread related to an accident of this nature going on in Paris, and went to every single local RC club (there weren’t much at the time I guess). No trace from the person. The radio was still Crystal tech at the time, and I believe that whoever was behind the TX should have been at least 8km away from me. There were external battery packs installed in the machine and it was running on low RPM, it had an approximate flight time of 33 minutes on that flight. I still didn’t figured out what went wrong with the heli, for it to fall down in a sideway angle and land precisely on my back… it’s rather uncommon, at the very least.

From this I learned to always put ID marks on my models at all times, so if I happen to lose it, someone can find it and get my name and number along with basic instructions written in a tiny piece of paper held by tape.

 

I’m unsure. I always fly alone and never see the hobby news, but I believe this place is very “quiet” regarding this section of miniature aircraft.