Lee.org

My mom isn’t the best pilot. How do I know this? This is how I know:

Don’t let it be said that the Zagi flying wing is indestructible. I brought my mom, dad and niece out to the airfield yesterday. After a couple minutes of flight (they oo-ed and ahh-ed in all the right places), my mom wanted to try her hand at it. So I gave her a quick lesson, brought the plane up to 200 feet (what I thought to be “2 mistakes high”) and handed her the controls. She promptly pointed the nose down and gave it full throttle. Three seconds later, there was a 5″ deep hole in the ground. It was astounding. RIP Lee’s Zagi version 1.0

Dad and I have been having a good time joking about it. We’re saying that we should get her a purple heart. Or maybe she should have watched more of my dad’s war TV shows before taking to the air. She just keeps repeating how she’s so sorry and will never fly it again.. never ever ever. But I struck a deal with her. I’ll feel better about it if she learns how to fly and takes the controls just one more time. After all, we can’t have her grieving about some silly little plane forever. It also doesn’t hurt that she volunteered to pay for the damage. That last bit means I’ll be rebuilding the plane to version 1.1 :-). I was never happy with my Monocote job. So I’ll send away for new trays, maybe a new motor (brushless?? hmm? hmm?) and we’ll be back in the air in a month or two. Actually, speaking of indestructibility….. The only things I lost in the crash were the motor tray and canopy. The entire rest of the plane is still intact! wing, winglets, elevons… The motor, receiver, and servos are still good too. It’s the loss of the motor tray that “killed” the plane. That’s because I have to rip out a lot to fix it the motor tray. And if I’m going to rip out so much, then I want to do a total overhaul.