This happened a few years ago. I was standing with a group of 4 or 5 other flyers, just talking before packing up to go home. About 150-200 feet away, someone was hovering an excel 60, with his back to us. I wasn't really paying attention until someone yelled "Look out!". As we learned later, the heli lost its fore-aft servo and it locked in the aft position. All I saw was the heli lifting up over the pilots head and arc toward the group of us. I swear I saw my name on the blades. We all ran, I think I tripped, landing on the ground, rolling up into a ball and covering my head with my hands. About 5 minutes later (it seemed) I felt something hit my left ankle. Well, I figured it was broken, but when I turned to look at it found that it wasn't. Fortunately, the heli had hit the ground, breaking the tips off the blades (and slowing them down) before it ran blade first across my ankle. I hadlots of pain, a big dent and bruise for a few weeks, a fear of flying, and blade tips as a souvenir.

This happened a few years ago. I was standing with a group of 4 or 5 other flyers, just talking before packing up to go home. About 150-200 feet away, someone was hovering an excel 60, with his back to us. I wasn't really paying attention until someone yelled "Look out!". As we learned later, the heli lost its fore-aft servo and it locked in the aft position. All I saw was the heli lifting up over the pilots head and arc toward the group of us. I swear I saw my name on the blades. We all ran, I think I tripped, landing on the ground, rolling up into a ball and covering my head with my hands. About 5 minutes later (it seemed) I felt something hit my left ankle. Well, I figured it was broken, but when I turned to look at it found that it wasn't. Fortunately, the heli had hit the ground, breaking the tips off the blades (and slowing them down) before it ran blade first across my ankle. I hadlots of pain, a big dent and bruise for a few weeks, a fear of flying, and blade tips as a souvenir.

About ten years ago I thought I would try helis and I bought a MFA 500 from Hobby Lobby. No knowing what I was doing I tried to crank the thing and was not holding onto the blades. It wouldn't start so in frustration I pushed the throttle forward and hit the starter the engine started and the clutch engaged. The blades started spinning suddenly and I was lying under them with my hand holding one of the skids. All of this happened so quick and I reached my hand forward anticipating a strike in the head. It hit me in the palm, breaking a blade, but I had a severe deep bruise to my palm and wrist. The blood clot (bruise) was pressing on my nerves and made my hand numb and weak for about a week or two. I gave the damn helicopter away and stayed away from them until recently. I learned a new respect for them. Those blades are not like aircraft propellers (.40-.60 size) they might cut you, but a tremendous amount of force is behind those long heavy heli blades. Even a .30 size could do alot of damage if it hits the right spot. A strike to the head or neck could be lethal.

Learned my lesson,

Tom

A local RC shop owner and long time helicopter pilot showed me pictures where an out of control 60 sized machine, that he was flying, got him across the back in three or four places. He had 1/4 in deep and 1/4 in wide gashes across his back from one side to the other. His whole back, except for the deep gashes, was black, blue, yellow, green, and all the colors in between. Very nasty looking! He said it wasn't responding right, and he tried to stay with it too long as it was coming at him. All he could do at the last second was turn his back to it. I guess the moral of the story is, if it's out of control and coming at you.....dump it in the ground rather than trying to save it....we all know how hard it is to purposely ditch one though. :o)

Stephen

Hi there, just a quick warning to anyone as stupid as myself. 3 weeks ago I went flying with my Dad so he could take some pics of my new pride and joy. After the first flight (which went very well) while refueling he asked what the buzzing noise was. I informed him it was the gyro, which I then switched off (to increase battery life) while we chatted and took the static pics. I then fired her back up for the next flight, the obvious happened as it went out of control. I applied full power to get out of trouble but it was pointing straight at me and was heading for my face. My natural reaction was to put my hands up to protect my face which resulted in a sickening 'thud' as the blades hit the back of my hand. The end result was two broken bones in my hand, three weeks in plaster, and I currently have strapping on two fingers to imobilise part of my hand. There was also considerable damage to my Nexus which due to my condition I cannot fix until I have full use of both hands. I know this all sounds like stupidity on my part but it was just something that was overlooked prior to flight.

The moral of the story is NEVER overlook any part of your pre-flight checks.

Happy (and above all, safe) flying.

Iain.

Another interesting story in relation to this topic occurred about 12 years ago as well. This guy who was teaching me to fly bought a used heli, I think it was a Cricket. He put in his radio and proceeded to attempt to hover and was doing a fairly good job of it. It was getting dark and he was doing this under an overhead street light. The heli was about 4 feet up and started drifting back toward him. He tried to compensate but as it turned out the batteries, which he didn't check, weren't very good. Well to make a long story short, he stepped out of the way just as the blades caught the edge of his transmitter. The heli then drifted into a fence where it proceeded to beat itself to death. As we stood there looking over the pieces we noticed his clothes were extremely bloody. The heli blades also caught his 3rd and 4th fingers of his left hand, slicing them to the bone. He never even felt it. We took him to the hospital and he got several stitches. More reasons for me to swear off helis until I got older and was closer to death anyways.

Tom

We had one guy hit in our club many years back. A 60 size heli had an RX battery failure while hovering close in and the fellow watching just barely turned away before the chopper was on him and the blades struck him several times in his back. Thankfully they were wood blades as I'm afraid to think how bad a set of stiff carbon fiber blades would hurt a person. He had 3 or 4 deep long cuts across his back and required many stiches. The emergency crews went wild when they heard a person had been hit by a helicopter (they thought full scale!). When they showed up and couldn't find the full size heli, I think the panic level settled down a bit. The fellow has fully recovered but his back was a mess for a couple of months.

John

I'd forgotten my recent experience with a new set of carbon fiber blades. Virgin flight...half tank in, stopped to adjust the needle valve and walked right into the slowly rotating disk. Nice gash in my knee and one dead set of blades...split the trailing edge open over about a 2 inch span...sh*t...no stiches required :-) Beware of black blades!

... John

I got hit about 2 months ago... reallllly stupid on my part-- I was leaning over to slow the head down after a nice flight...and one leg to too close. First blade cut straight through my jeans, tipping the machine closer into me, the 2nd blade came round and took a 1" long, 1/8" deep of skin with it. The 3rd swip directly hit into the wound and stopped the head.

The result: A small scar, and about 2 weeks of a base-ball sized swolen wound... seriously black and blue... and a new respect for the energy left in those blades.

-- Aaron

A few years back, I had just finished trimming out my pride and joy, a new Hirobo Condor (60 size). I was going to offer some of the nearby club experts a go with it, and was unhooking my neckstrap from the Tx to hand it round. I must have accidentally caught the power switch, because suddenly the thing went to full throttle, and leapt off the ground. It came back straight towards us and we all scattered!

It locked on to me like a homing missile and chased me round the patch. I realized it was gaining on me, and at the last moment bent forward away from it.

The rotors (wooden, thank heavens) caught me right where I keep my brains with an almighty wack!

Fortunately it was the middle of winter and I was wearing a LOT of clothes (jeans, ski suit, poachers jacket etc). It didn't actually hurt much at the time, but I reckoned I was going to have a severe bruise on my rear. When I got home and changed, I discovered that the blade had gone right through ALL that clothing, and left a 3" long cut on my backside, which had been bleeding quite heavily. Of course, by now it had all dried, so getting my underwear off was quite a painful procedure. The next morning I had a bruise covering almost the whole buttock, and I couldn't sit down for a week!

The heli escaped with broken blades, bent flybar, shaft and feathering spindle.

After that I fitted a second latch onto the Tx switch so I could lock it ON as well as OFF!

The story sounds quite amusing, and in many ways it is, but I learned a lot from it, and now have a VERY healthy respect for the inertia in the rotor blades!!!

Pete

I've never been bitten by a rotor, but some time ago i was teaching hovering to a guy. the shuttle clutch failed (!) and i switched to the eagle. While overing about 10 meters in front of us and with the guy in control, for some reason the heli pitched up about 60 degrees and in no time it was right on top of my head. o took control back, nosed down and fully throttled to send the damn thing away from my new haircut. i swear i can still remember seeing the blades no more than 12 inches from my face, the rotor downwash on my face, and i could clearly see every blade rotating in front of me and ear the beat of it in the air.- recovered the heli and landed. on the other side of the training lead was nobody. the guy still running like hell!!

Ciao

Gianmarco

I once got whacked in the forearm by a Lite Machine heli blades during startup. Now you may laugh because this is such a small helicopter. However, it was in late February, cold and I was wearing a THICK padded winter coat.

It was quite painful and I had two sore red whelts (spelling?) on my arm for over a week and the bruises didn't go away for nearly a month. Amazing how much rotational energy that little .06 Norvel can spool those blades up to. If it had been summer and I was in short sleeves it would've been ugly especially considering the LMH blades are very sharp in comparison to collective blades found on most 30s to 60s. No doubt a trip to the emergency room would've been in order. That was enough to get my attention. Lesson learned; any size helicopter blades.......very scary.

Dave

Here is a true one, embarassing but it may help someone.

I has learning how to fly with a Concept 30 that didn't want to cooperate in any way at all. Nothing was going right so in frustration I held the tailboom and reved the engine up trying to tune it and maybe get somewhere. The blade struck the back of my hand and ripped it open exposing the tendons and leaving a nasty scar. I am lucky I didn't loose my function in 3 fingers!

While I was waiting for my friend to arrive and take me to the emergency room I went into the house and got my revolver (a Colt Army 1860, 50 cal muzzleloader) and holding my bleeding hand against my chest I fired all six shots into the Heli with my left hand. I am now a VERY satisfied LMH 110 pilot and will never again do something that I KNOW is wrong. I have however inspired a local tradition of shooting offending models. A friends pylon racer folded it's wing in half and crashed a week ago. He calmly walked back to his truck, retrieved his pump 12 guage and tought the offending plane a lesson.

This is an expensive way to deal with it but the satasfaction is well worth it.

Scott

I can tell you from experience, they are very dangerous. I was doing a high speed vertical out in from of me with a size 30 at max power and when it reached about 50 feet the controls went dead. The heli came straight at me and before I could get away it crashed at my feet and sharttered both blades across my shin bone just above the ankle. I was lucky, X-rays revealed no broken bones, but the pain was unbearable. It was almost a month before I could walk. Needless to say I stand further back now and don't get anywhere near those blades. I was lucky that time.

Sportcraft

When I was stationed in Seoul, South Korea, I would go and fly near the han river with the local heli pilots. One day there was a new guy who was hovering a concept 30 DX was doing quite well. Then he attempted to hover the heli nose in and without warning his heli flew straight foreward and hit him in the chest and fell to the ground making that sick dying helicopter sound, and knocking the pilot off his feet. The amazing this about this the pilot was shocked and embarrased but otherwise unharmed. It was a very cold winter day and he was wearing a very heavy coat and gloves, and the old concept 30 DX came with these crappy foam blades. Both of which contributed to this guy walking away unharmed.

Mikey

We had a guy come into our shop few weeks ago lookin to buy a heli... after talkin with him for an hour he bought a kit (nexus 30)....I strongly suggested he let someone at a flying field look it over or bring it to us (we do free setups if bought from us) just so someone looks at it before he tries to fire it up...

Well... he came in the next day and bought the radio gear he needed, (8103).... brand new... and went home... well..he came back the following day, his hand all bandaged up...and i said to him " you didnt?" and he started out.. "well what i was doing...was...." and thats all i needed to hear..

Apparantly he tried to do some tracking which in itself isnt so bad sounding , except he said the throttle reved way up... (since he had no clue where to set it i imagine) and then it vibrated (hmmm, blade tracking etc..) and shook the RX crystal OUT! He, went on saying the heli lifted up, came across the yard at him...got his hand with the blade, and also got the NEW JR 8103 radio also.... plus mashed up the machine when it finally stopped after hitting one of his vehicles.....

This is the second person that has done this (first time rc'er thats bought from our shop) thinking they can do this on their own, even after you talk and talk to them about havin someone else look it over first....

After he explained this story to me... he said he would bring me the machine the next time and let us go over it ......

Hard lesson but by jo i think he's got it now..lol

Dave Townsend