At Rotor LIVE 2025 during the quarter-finals of the 3D contest, Vava Boonmala had an amazing crash where he touched the tail on a rail and lost most of his tail blades.
The model immediately goes into an uncontrolled pirouette, but instead of crashing out, he decides to carry on flying for as long as he can, and what follows is nothing short of amazing.
He gains control of the model, but cannot stop the pirouetting, so he uses piro flips and collective to keep the model away from the crowds and remain flying. As the tail is now unbalanced, it eventually leads to the boom fracturing and going up into the blades. The boomstrike breaks the tail belt, which is ejected out the back, and part are thrown all over the sky.
The model is spinning even faster now, too fast to control, but using collective when the model is upright or inverted, he continues to keep flying. Eventually he decides there is no point carrying on, so he hits throttle hold and the blades start to slow.
As the blades are damaged, when the headspeed drops lower it causes a wobble and the blades fold and the model sinks to the ground. He’s still super happy, and crowd gives him a well deserved round of applause. Amazing!
Here is the full flight unedited flight.
