December 20,1996

Hi Gang,

I had a really close call with my Intrepid today and thought I should share the experience with you all in hopes that I can save someone out there a potential crash.

It's been quite a while since we've seen snow in these parts and probably longer since I've flown from snow. Anyways, I'm out this afternoon at Cherry Creek by myself really enjoying the balmy temperatures flying the Intrepid when I decide that it would be pretty cool to do some pirouettes in the 4" or so deep snow. Later, I thought it would also be pretty neat to make some low passes and drag the skids along the snow to see how long a track and powder wake I could make (I know, pretty weird, huh?). Well what I didn't realize at the time was that in the process of having all this fun I was slowly filling the bottom of the canopy with snow, which was now beginning to melt in and around my radio components (i.e. switch, charging jack). As you can imagine, shortly thereafter, the heli goes into "auto flip" 3D mode (Kent, you would've been proud!) doing it's own aileron tumbles from 50 feet high. I quickly hit the throttle hold button and was able to regain some control to initiate an auto and shut the throttle down. The next part is unbelievable but the heli locked up again and performed the smoothest auto-rotation roll on the way down at about 30 feet altitude never losing much rotor rpm and somehow regained control as it flipped back to upright and just enough time for me to perform a nice soft sliding auto in the snow. I had to run over to the heli pretty fast as the throttle servo was starting to go nuts as it would lose and gain its signal but I was finally able to stop the rotor by hand and shut the motor off. Whew!!!!

After close inspection, I found the switch wet from melting snow and the charging jack (which I usually let hang by the bottom of the canopy) had a clump of snow on it and also soaked (shouldn’t be a factor when the radio is on though). After a few minutes sitting idle on the picnic table slowly brought the radio back to life. I was pretty lucky this time!