Massive R/C B-52 crash footage

[Tommy Haupfear]

Click here

The camera person needs to learn a thing or two but I'm betting someone shed a tear that day.

[John Hudson]

Om my god. They are so bummed. I cant believe that plane was so HUGE. Amazing. It sounded like a jet upon take off; was it?

[Mike Moncrief]

Hello,

wow what does a R/C plane like that cost ??

Mike

[Dylan Couper]

I've seen that before, but last time I saw the page...
THERE WERE NO CRASH PHOTOS!!!


Wow, that's sad.

I'd guess it would cost at least five figures.

[Ken Tanaka]

That was quite a model plane! They're not cheap but they're also not packaged kits. That is, hobbyists build them a bit at a time. Similar to video geeks, model plane hobbyists vigorously wrestle over tiny who-gives-a-damn details.

One of the fellows that built-out my kitchen remodel several years ago was an r/c jet enthusiast and, if permitted to do so, would drop everything to tell me about his hobby. One day he brought some VHS tapes (commercially produced) featuring coverage of some of their jamborees. I was really shocked to see how large, fast and powerful some of these planes are. I was also very glad to see that events are mainly limited to large, un-populated places like...Indiana.

Don't feel to bad for this plane's owners. They probably cried in their beer for an evening or two, then became all hoppy-excited at the prospect of rebuilding the leviathon bigger and better (to the chagrin of their wives and detriment of their kids' college funds).

[Pete Bauer]

Hauntingly reminiscent of a real B-52 crash at Fairchild AFB in 1994. They overbanked and nosed in.

Fortunately for the RC guys, they can have a disastrous crash and then just go tip a pint before dusting off the woodworking tools!

EDIT:
Here's a link (embedded RealPlayer file):
http://www.simradar.com/Feature/2317...child_AFB.html

[Dylan Couper]

The wood and time is free.
Those jet engines ain't. My memory is foggy, but I think I remember reading that they are over a thousand bucks each. I don't think they survived the crash.

[Nathan Gifford]

Yeah Dylan that's probably stateside costs. I wonder how much they are in the UK.

BTW if you go over to host site they have a full media player version instead of flash. It must have been spectacular to be there in person.

[Ken Tanaka]

I wondered how they transported a plane that size. They must have done some on-site assembly because that thing would certainly not fit down a road.

[Dylan Couper]

Ken, maybe they just fly it over from a different airport? :)

I guess the wings must come off.

[Nathan Gifford]

The sure came off after the crash. It sure looked like a real B-52 crash too looking at the burn site.

Did they ever figure out why the bid bird crashed?

[Steve McDonald]

Be sure to read all the pages of the Guest Book on the B-52 picture site. It's got many interesting comments about the plane and the incident and has my analysis of the cause of the crash.

Steve McDonald

[Ken Tanaka]

Looks like their site has followed that model plane into the ground. "This site has been suspended."

[Steve McDonald]

Yeah, the B-52 site seems to have crashed since I posted on it last night. I'm glad I got to see it while it was still available. The whole stukastudios.se website is mysterious. It's now only marginally workable, overall. Hopefully, it may be just a temporary shutdown for repairs.

For those who asked about the cause of the crash, here's my take on it: Just like the full-sized B-52 that met its controversial end at Fairchild AFB in 1994, this model had too low an airspeed and banked too sharply, close to the ground. They both appeared to be going into stiff headwinds, which kept their airspeeds just above the stall level.
When they banked, the low wings dropped into an area of lower windspeed near the ground, while the upper wings went into faster headwinds, higher up. The uneven reduction in airflow over the lower wings caused them to stall and they dropped and the planes rotated towards the low sides.

In the Fairchild video, you can see the ailerons in a full left-bank position at the beginning of the attempted turn. When the wing stalls, the pilot quickly shifts the ailerons to the right-bank position, but it's too late to recover. The plane then snags a group of poles and wires with its left wingtip and plows into the ground.

I couldn't see the control surfaces very well on the model B-52, but they must have been put in the same configuration, to cause it to do that unfortunate manuever. If you study windspeeds, it's surprising how much faster they usually are, just a short distance higher, near the ground. Also, in a banking manuever that turns a plane away from a headwind, the lower, inside wing will have part of its airfoil blocked by the fuselage, from the extra lift of the headwind.

I believe that in both cases, not enough airspeed was being maintained to have a margin of safety. I also think that the model may have been underpowered with the engines they chose. If they rebuild it, they might consider larger powerplants.
It would be informative to see the performance specifications on the model and learn just how much airspeed it could develop and its stall speed.

In any case, it's a shame to see so much work and effort turned into wreckage. But, as a former designer and builder of large model aircraft (9 to 16 ft. wingspans), I learned that this outcome is often part of the deal and you have to accept it and be thankful that no one was hurt. Next time, you know a few more things to avoid.

Steve McDonald