Took my brand new 7C transmitter to the field today for its "maiden
flight". Did the normal prefilght checks: range, ailerons, elevator,
rudder, and throttle all doing what they should. The first 3 flights
went without incident. Then I remembered this thing had a timer -- why
not try it out?
I'm just a couple weeks from solo, so asked my instructor for some help
setting it up, and away we go. Takeoff was normal: climb-out and left
turn. Then, no right aileron to bring the wings level. Fortunately, my
instructor was close by. I was able to tell him what was wrong, keeping
my plane just barely away from the ground until he took the transmitter
and was able to land it without incident. We found the endpoint
adjustment for the right aileron set to 0%. I did some reading in this
newsgroup and learned that this is a known problem with this transmitter
and Futaba's very lame advice is not to touch the timer.
So I learned several important lessons today: 1)Preflight checks are not
just for the first flight of the day, especially after fiddling with
transmitter programming. 2)Try out the new toys on the ground until you
know exactly what they do. 3)I need to learn how to fly with the rudder
for that someday when a servo, etc. fails.
I don't blame Futaba for my own inexperience (neglecting a proper
preflight), but they surely have a responsibility to fix this problem.
I'm grateful to my instructor for being able to save my plane and feel
for the guys who lost their's to this glitch.
Can't wait to get back out to the field and try again!
Regards,
Ken
- posted 17 years ago