Reinforcing tail spring pin

On a neighbouring club I heard a few people telling about breaking spring pins in the tail. One guy told that recently three of the raptors at their club crashed due to this. This log on the web also reports a crash due to this problem, on 23/7/99, and Thomas Reingruber reports that his pin broke twice (although with a .45 engine).
If the spring pin breaks, the tail rotor ceases rotating, because the gear will slip on its axis, and the heli will immediately start to spin. If you are very fast, only the autorotation switch can save your heli...
I reinforced the pin by putting a piece of paperclip wire through the pin. The paperclip had to be sanded slightly thinner to get it through, and was fixed with loctite. Furthermore the ends were cut off with a cutting tool. Therefore the ends are slightly wider, also fixing the wire in place.


Paperclip through the spring pin, to prevent it from breaking.

© W.Pasman, 20/4/01