How to Rescue Your RC Plane from a Tree
Through painful personal experience, I’ve learned the best techniques for freeing your RC airplane from the evil clutches of mother nature’s best weapon against pilots: trees. Read on and I’ll share with you the pearls of wisdom that helped me libreate my HobbyZone Super Cub after 3 long days of arboreal bondage.
Skip to the video
Last Friday, I decided to tape my digital camera to my HobbyZone Super Cub and do some aerial video. I had done this in the past with great success, so I was natually quite excited. I taped the camera to the side of the fuselage directly under the left wing, set the radio to full throttle, and hand launched it into the wind. I had trouble climbing at first, so I piloted the plane in a wide clockwise circuit around the field trying to gain altitude. After about 20 seconds of flight, disaster struck. In this case I am defining “disaster” as “pilot error”. To be specific, I should have pushed the stick to the right, but did the exact opposite. This unexpectedly pointed my Cub directly at the tallest tree on the perimiter of the field, and simultaneously caused me to loose about 20 feet of altitude. At this point, the plane was about 300 feet away from me, which would soon provide me a valuable lesson about depth perception. I thought that the plane was well clear of hitting that big, looming tree, but I was wrong. The plane was in fact on a collision course with the leafy tree tops.
The impact was suprisingly soft. The plane landed (crashed) into the thinnest of the upper most branches, which cradled it like a baby about 60 feet up. No problem, I thought. I can just spin the prop and wiggled the tail until it falls free. No such luck. Mother nature had claimed its sacrifice and was not about to relinquish with a little tail wagging.
What Not To Do
The first thing you may think to try when your plane is stuck 60 feet up in a tree is to throw a stick at it. There are usually plenty of sticks around parks, and you’ve got a pretty good arm, right? Wrong. Throwing a stick 60 feet into the air, hoping to hit a plane that is securely lodged in a tree will likely not work. Plus, you are not as strong as you think (at least that was my experience).
The second thing you may think to do is return home to get some rope, which you can tie around your trusty stick, hoping to latch it onto a branch close to the plane and shake it free. This will also fail, but you will get a great upper-body workout.
Failing the stick-and-rope trick, you may think the stick is just not heavy enough, so you get a piece of brick, tie the same rope around it, and try to lob it over a tree branch. This also fails, because, again, you just haven’t got that much arm strength. Then you get clever. Maybe you could swing the brick around in big circles (a la David and Goliath) and, using your college physics knowledge, hurl the brick-and-rope up and over a tree branch near the plane. This will also fail, because your brain will simply refuse to let you lob that brick straight after it’s been orbitting your head for 30 seconds (again, that was my experience anyway).
At this point you are getting tired, but you decide to repeat the last two paragraphs about 10 times before finally giving up for the day. So you say good night to your plane, and go home for the day. The next day, in desparation, you replace the brick with a tennis ball, and the rope with fishing line. Your arm is sore from the previous day’s efforts, but you are confident that a new day will bring new hope. This is where you are wrong again, and you give up a lot more quickly than the previous day.
Then it rains.
Finally, Some Hope
After a good nigh’s rest and lots of sighing from a supportive, patient wife, you come up with two more ideas. The first involves about 50 feet of 1/2″ PVC pipe and lots of duct tape. The second involves a sling shot, lead weights, and fishing line. So you go buy 6 9-foot lengths of PVC pipe, 700 yards of fishing line, some lead weights, and a sling shot, and you head off to the field with new found confidence.
The pipe idea ends up failing for two reasons: 1. PVC is very flimsy, and at 50 feet, you can barely control it, let alone knock a plane out of a tree. 2. 50 feet is not actually enough pipe, apparently.
The slingshot idea, however, shows some merit. If you tie a lead weight to the end of some fishing line, unravel about 50 feet of line on the grass, and shoot the lead weight toward the plane, you will find (suprisingly) that you can shoot that line really close to the plane. What’s more, you can actually get the line to wrap around a branch pretty close to your plane. This brings new found hope! What you soon discover, however, is that the fishing line breaks very easily when you tug on it. Not to worry. This is where you head back to Wal-Mart and buy line that is rated at 50-lbs. Spider Wire, they call it, and it is tough. But it’s green and very difficult to see on the grass, so you are careful not to drop it. At this point, you’ve recruited a co-worker with good aim (though not required) and lots of patience (strictly required). Maybe this co-worker is named Steve. Steve’s got good aim with a sling shot and knows that you will let him fly your plane if he helps you get it down. Steve has such good aim that he shoots the lead weight right up and over the plane, with the 50-lbs fishing line in tow. He slowly pulls on the line until it wraps around the plane. If you are lucky (and apparently Steve is very lucky), the line will not only wrap around your plane, but also secure itself crane-like on a neighboring branch. At this point, Steve gives the line a few good tugs, and is able to free the plane from its leafy captor and lower it to the ground, where you stand with outsretched arms like a giddy girl at a weddinng boquet toss. If Steve considers himself pretty funny, he may even jerk the plane back up right before you can reach it, but you’ll forgive him since he got your plane down.
And that, my friends, is how you get an RC airplane down from a tree using fishing line, lead weights, and a slingshot. Total cost: under $20.00.
Oh, by the way, unless your hands are made of steel, you’ll also want some gloves so your fingers don’t get burned by the fishing line as you pull on it.
For those of you wanting a damage report, here are the details: After 3 days of tree captivity and one night of rain, the camera still works, and the only damage to the plane was a broken prop and a small incision in the wing where the fishing line cut into it. 30 minutes with my favorite 5-minute epoxy had the Cub airworthy again.
And now, for those of you morbid enough to want to see first person what the on-board camera filmed as it crashed into the tree, here’s the video. You can skip the first 1:30 because it’s just me taping the camera to the plane. The tree crash happens at about 2:00. At about 10:00, you can hear me trying to spin the prop to free the plane, and then the prop breaks against a branch. Enjoy!
November 8th, 2006 at 1:47 pm
This Steve fellow seems like quite the catch. Can I order one through this website?
November 8th, 2006 at 7:23 pm
Dave you gotta get a lite video camera , wirelessvideo.com, or CVS drug stores
sell a one time use video cam. for 28. $$ that can be hacked to reuse.
PS What park in provo were you flying at. I live in Batesville Indiana, But spent
a few years in Happy Vally
Dennis
November 10th, 2006 at 11:58 am
Dennis,
Thanks for the tip. It’s right across the street from Raging Waters on 1700 South at about 1200 West, in Salt Lake City. Here’s a link to the location: Map
November 11th, 2006 at 7:50 pm
I’m learning to fly a Super Cub too. In the past 2 weeks, I’ve “landed” in at least half a dozen trees. Glad you got yours out without too much damage. I’m curious how you mounted the camera to the plane. Was it on the side, or on the bottom? Any chance you could post a picture of how the camera was mounted?
November 12th, 2006 at 2:00 am
I mounted the camera on the side, just under the left wing. I taped it to the fuselage and to the wing. It’s just a standard run-of-the-mill digital camera, and it is really too heavy for this plane.
–Dave
February 22nd, 2007 at 8:41 pm
Great idea, we spent 2 hours slinging frisby golf discks at the plane. I will be going to get a sling shot in the morning.
By the way the disck thing does’nt work.
-Shreveport, LA
February 22nd, 2007 at 9:20 pm
Good luck getting your plane out of the tree Bryan. If you keep persistent with the slingshot, it’ll work!
Good luck!
March 13th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
As a recent “Victim” of a large fir tree, I employed your methods to try and get my plane down. Couldn’t hook a fishing line that high with the pole, so a friend came over and tried the slingshot thing. We hooked the wrong branch, and ran out of sinkers/weights. A not so quick trip to the sporting goods store for more weights and heavier cord found us back at the park. Bear in mind this all took place over a weeks time, for a $30 Yellow Bee plane, so I wasn’t going to spend any real money to get it back. After finally obtaining what we felt was the perfect setup to get the plane down (about 50 feet up) we arrive at the park to find a strong wind blowing, and the plane laying on the ground.
Sometimes you just have to wait it out. LOL
April 2nd, 2007 at 3:07 pm
What was needed to get my Super Cub down from my landing tree (…) was a brave girlfriend with tree-climbing skills well above average, and a ladder. Ofcourse, it doesn’t work if you choose a too high tree as your landing site.
Great blog, by the way!
November 27th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
I have a piper super cub stuck in a tree (Unsure of the species) that has a branch somehow tangled between the wing supports. its amazing how perfectly it landed in there but i have an idea with a pool skimmer pole, some rope, and a tree pruner. I’ll update later hopefully.
February 25th, 2008 at 3:43 am
my friend riley decided to fly inverted over 60 foot trees when he was 61 feet high with the t-28 trojan and it reamed into the tree. at my school we have a baseball shooter, so wtf, we took about 200 ft of ext. cord from the dugout to the tree and shot 10 balls at it, losing all of them–but 1 hit the plane, and made as sound like this “boosh”. That was it. Then it rained, and im on break so when i go back i was gonna shoot paintballs at the beeatch—but thanks to this thread, ill get the local stuff from walmart tomorrow and not have to freeze paintballs and shoot through my plane. well..if it doesnt work..then ill try that hahah
thanks bro.
February 25th, 2008 at 9:29 am
Ben,
Great story! I can’t wait to hear how you get your plane down from the tree. I would advise *not* shooting anything at it, because even if you do hit the plane, it still has 60 more feet of tree to fall through before it hits the ground, and it’ll probably get stuck again, and again, and again…
Go get yourself a sling shot, some fishing weights, and some heavy-duty fishing line. Good luck!
–Dave
April 16th, 2008 at 10:50 am
Ugggh! Just lost a brand new Parkzone T-28 Trojan in a 60 foot tree along with the probably now shot 2500mah lipo. I tried the slingshot method and was not too succesful with my attemps as I was having problems with the line getting tangled in the sling when fired.
If you have the time you could rig something with a forward mounted reel/spool with a wire guide and this could possibly eliminate the problems I was having, but in my opinion a bow device is a much better choice. My next attempt was a kids bow and arrow with the line securely taped to the back near the arrows knock. The first two shots were slightly low and the tape held so well my #50 pound line finally snapped after attempting to free the arrow on the second shot leaving me with only one arrow. The final shot dropped the line perfectly over the plane and branch, when I pulled to free the plane the line pulled off the arrow and of course the last arrow was stuck now with the plane. I do however highly recommend using a bow or crossbow with a fishing reel to get the line over a branch or over the plane. It is very accurate and easily has the range unlike the slingshot in my opinion. Just be sure to have a few extra cheap arrows with blunt rubber tips and secure the line well! If I had a little more time, patience and arrows it would be out of the tree. Instead I found a guy on craiglist.com who works for a tree trimming company that is more than happy to come out and spend less than an hour making $40 bucks to ascend the tree and hand carry it out. Wish I had just done this in the first place as the money spent and time wasted exceeded , but I will keep the bow and buy a few more arrows in the likely event that I need to do another recovery. Here is a great guide on how a couple of different line launching devices can be constructed. Hope this helps.
http://www.newtribe.com/technical-new.html
April 18th, 2008 at 4:36 am
My first RC flight with my new Hobbyzone Super club was successful until I landed it in a 62 ft tree. I’m praying for a windy day. Maybe I’ll look into the sling shot idea. I probably lost $10,000 in the stock market last week but am more upset about my $100 super cub in that tree.
May 15th, 2008 at 10:50 am
I’ve flown kites for the past 15 years ad I use a giant 12-foot surf-fishing rod with 20-or-40-lb test monofilament fishing line to fly kites with cameras and such, up to 500-1000 feet. I also get caught in treetops and rooftop antenntas, and I find the leverage of the pole can get my “stuck kite” out of these areas… Sometimes I can break small branches pulling my kites out. I imagine I could land a kite near a stuck plane and rip it out. It would sure be dramatic! I have dropped objects on baseball games, etc. (t-shirts, empty 1-L soda bottles, etc).
June 3rd, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Yo thx for the tip!
June 14th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
we modified the weight and slingshot idea to fishing line wedged in a potatoe by a stick fired out of a potatoe gun. First shot got it to a lower branch where 2 more shots got It down in almost 1 good piece
August 22nd, 2008 at 4:18 pm
A rc helicopter with a skyhook would work, maybe I’ll start a rescue service