Recovering RC Plane from a Tree

So, three days ago it was a nice hot, sunny day as I drove back from my kung fu class so I decided to stop at a little park to fly my Champ, which was with me in the car with a fully charged battery.

The little park, called Heworth Common, has quite a few tree obstacles and I really should have known better. It was a hot day, but there was also quite a breeze and a Hobbyzone Champ is quite a light aircraft so is quite prone to being blown a bit by the wind, though it does cope with it rather well in my opinion.

However, before long the inevitable happened and I crashed her into a tree, a small silver birch. Fortunately, it was quite a young tree so I could jump up and shake the branch the Champ was stuck on and she soon fell out of the tree to the ground, yay.

Any sensible person would have stopped there, perhaps seeking out somewhere a bit more treeless, but not me, oh no. I had to keep on flying, until the Champ sailed gently and serenely into the top of a much higher tree where there was no hope of reaching her, or the branches she was stuck on.

I tried for half an hour to get the RC Champ out of the tree, throwing up various stick to try and shake her loose. A guy walking his dog even helped for a while, throwing up tennis balls that his dog dutifully retrieved.

It was all hopeless though, the plane was simply too high and the branches to big to the bothered by a few sticks being thrown at them. On top of this I was getting very hot and dehydrated so I decided to go and get some lunch as Morrisons and see if I could think of a better way to get it down, and not worrying too much about someone else getting it down while I was away.
Anyway I had my meal at the supermarket and had the idea that I could use a rope or something with a hook on the end and went walking the aisles for something suitable. I found a golden washing like, 20 metres of it, shining at me and only costing £1.60 - perfect!

I had ideas of looking for a hook, or even going home to get an actual grappling hook, but it occurred to me I might get that stuck up the tree also - so I decided I would just tie a stick to the washing line instead.

I got back to the field and the Champ was still up the tree, so I tied two stick to the washing line in a cross shape and through it up there. After missing a couple of time I added a third stick for extra weight and tried again. After two or three throws I had the right branch snagged and shook it by pulling on the line and my RC Champ came floating back to earth. Brilliant!

I'd saved myself £70, because I definitely would have bought another Champ because I love it, and was very proud to have thought my way out of the puzzler of the Champ up the tree.

So the tip really is to always take a long length of washing line (the plastic coating helps it to slip through the branches better than a rough rope would) just in case. Don't bother with a grappler, just make one out of sticks so it's not a big deal if you lose it.