"Beav" wrote in message
...

At the 2003 3D Masters (he won of course) he went out to fly his "thank
you" flight. He took off with the intention of a quick sideways flip to
inverted, putting the heli into a depression in the ground, which would've
"hidden" it from the spectators. He did that aright, but he didn't get it
OUT of the depression, he made the depression deeper instead.

It was a REAL shame he did that, coz he really is a thing to watch. He
also took half his tail blades off doing tick-tocks at zero feet (-2
inches actually) a flight or two earlier. he killed that heli too.

He didn't make any of those mstakes this year though

Beav

Yeah, the last good one I watched wasn't really that spectacular, but it was
funny. He was doing a "stoppy" auto. You know, where they deliberately
hold positive collective until the rotor blades completely stop. I've seen
him do this successfully before but "not" this time. Naturally, he started
"way" up there. The blades did stop rotating but when he lowered the
collective, one of them lagged back and got caught under the horizontal fin
against the tail boom. All he / we could do at that point was watch the
free fall. He started the maneuver so high that I think it took 5 or 6
seconds for the model to hit the ground. I wish my eyes were "half" that
good! ;-) Right before it hit the ground, you could hear him say, "Bye
bye!" There was plenty of damage but it was rebuildable.

Fly Safe,
Steve R.