‘t was a lovely day..

..but it was cut short by something unexpected. When I launched the Insider for the first flight of what promised to be a lovely day, I got as far as 10 feet up, then a loud bang, lots of stuff falling from the forward area of the glider, unsettling silence, and then nothing.. Luckily I did have full control, and was able to land safely. My first hunch was that the prop clipped the canopy, but I can’s see any signs of the prop hitting the canopy. One blade of the prop broke off approx 2 cm from the root, it was later found approx 30 meters back from where I launched. Puzzling. The canopy support pin in the front was sheared off, so if it was not the prop, it was something on the inside trying too get out that broke it. After doing a lot of thinkings last night, I feel what could have happened, is that the motor wires got caught in the motor (there’s not a lot of space there). That caused the controller to follow the wires, hitting the on-off switch, and finally the cockpit. Altogether not good.

Or could the prop have sheared, causing some violent movements up front, that threw things around? I checked the max prop RPM, it’s rated at 9000 RPM. Not sure it I got close to that or not? Ecalc tells me I’m only doing 6500 RPM, so it’s not that.  (But I do have over 2:1 power to weight ratio)

Moral of the story:  if you ignore the little voice, that tells you to do a proper pre-season, take it all apart check, then punishment is to be expected!

Since I’m in the dark about the cause it’s going to be a try again and see what happens.