Sunday 27th

Damaged the Sbach yesterday thanks to a deadstick landing out in the rough. On my first flight of the day I noticed the tickover seemed a little low and halfway through my planned flight had a deadstick which thanks to the position I got back on the strip with no issues lucky me . I then re-trimmed my idle setting and had a great second flight with no deadstick. Then the third flight about ten minutes in had a second deadstick, this time in a crap position relative to the strip, and had to put it down in the rough. The model did a slow end over end and did some damage in the process worst of which cosmetically is a cracked canopy. My main reason for posting this is that I suspect the cause was the extreme heat causing my Boden type throttle cable to expand with heat and cause variation in slow running, this was backed up by the fact that both my rudder pull pull cables had lengthened considerably giving me about two inches free play at the rudder tip. At first when I retrieved the model I thought I had damaged the rudder or servo mount but on inspection all was found to be well, and I've been out to the trailer this morning and the cables have now contracted overnight and the said rudder play has disappeared. This problem may have been exacerbated by the internally mounted silencer can. I may have to re-fit the throttle stop screw on the carb and vent the rear of the fuselage.

Bad luck Bri - but interesting diagnosis, lets hope the snow comes again soon

Sorry to hear that Bri - heat is a funny thing to predict - especially as us Brits dont seem to get enough of it!

Look on the bright side though - despite the damage, the landing could have been much much worse!

Sorry to hear that Bri. I think you're spot on about the heat. I was there for a couple of hours early afternoon and everyone was struggling to start their engines and having cut outs once running.
I was just flying electric and even that felt down on power and all the lipos were slightly puffed after the flights.

It seems my diagnosis of an expanded throttle cable was incorrect. After completing repairs I hooked up the batteries for charging, the two lipo RX packs charged fine but when I got round to the ignition pack I couldn't get a connection on it and on further investigation found a broken inter-cell connection within the pack. It now looks likely that intermittent supply to the ignition was the cause of my deadsticks . Said pack has now been binned and replaced and all went well at the field yesterday.

Glad you got to the bottom of it, just goes to show how battery faults can catch us out.