Serious accident

Most unfortunate! The hobby certainly does not need such events. But looking at some of the attitudes displayed just here, are we surprised? I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often.

Life is dangerous.

Its flying in company and at clubs that incrses the possibility that a crash becomes injurious.

Ther are more light plane and airliner fatalities per year than model accidents that result in injury.

How many people travel on airliners? How many people hang around model fields?

This information is useless if expressed in "number of injuries", but meaningful if expressed as a percentage, due to the huge difference in numbers of participants.

I'll bet "There are exponentially more injury free trips each day in airliners and light planes than injury free model flying sessions" is also true.

Barry

I see your points but to infer any similarity with poor attitudes and this incident seem entirely misplaced.

From what has been posted it reads as though the operator of the aircraft was quite experienced, the aircraft superbly built (from a airworthiness viewpoint), and that all due care was being taken. If anything, all that has been inferred is that even with the absolute level of care taken an accident can occur.

I was horrified to hear of the terrible accident you reported on R/C Universe. I hope the injured R/Cer makes a speedy recovery.

However, I am just as horrified to hear that your first reaction is to make more rules and enact more legislation for the average Joe Blow modeler to have to follow.

I quote, "I would like to work with the AMA safety committee and really look into a way to police ourselves. We and Casey are lucky no one was killed. If we do not put restrictions and more failsafe measures in effect on ourselves then I feel the FAA and other government agencies will do it for us."

There's an old saying in RC, "You can't build to crash." This applies to personal safety as well. You can't restrict and legislate for every possible circumstance that might, in a 1000 to 1 chance, occur. The injured pilot was standing, by your report, 300 feet away from the takeoff point. That's a football field, Tom. It's also well over the AMA recommended distance that spectators should be from the flight line. Was it a "safe" distance? In view of what happened, of this one single incident, no. But in view of the many countless flights that ARE safely made by all RC aircraft, including giants, it was safe enough.

What failsafe device would have automatically crashed the plane in a "safe" spot? How many redundant battery systems should an airplane have, should one short out? How many duplicate sets of control linkages should it have, in case one breaks? How many RXs does it need, should one fail? Should we be using steel to build instead of balsa, ply, hardwood, Fiberglas, and carbon fiber? Maybe we should have two pilots, two transmitters, and two completely separate sets of controls in our aircraft.

Yes, that last statement is asinine, but it's where we're going if we legislate ourselves to death. We'll all have completely safe RC aircraft. Why will they be completely safe? Because they'll be so heavy, they won't be able to take off. But before that happens, there will be no RC pilots to fly them, because no one will be able to afford the expense or the special licenses required.

Tom, I certainly do appreciate your worry and concern for safety. However, I feel your first reaction is knee-jerk, due to the severity of the accident and your relationship to the injured RCer. You are the President of the IMAA. You must think of all the IMAA members, not just one.

RC is a relatively safe sport. Severe accidents get coverage and attention just because they are so uncommon. A pilot was killed during a pylon race. He was leaning against the front of the safety fence at Pylon 1 when a racer went out of control and struck him through the fence. Could that have been avoided? Yes, by his own responsibility. I plane goes out of control on takeoff and hits another pilot, cutting his leg. Could that have been avoided? Yes, by only allowing one pilot at a time to fly. Do you see where I'm going, Tom? Reasonable safety precautions should and must be followed, but what, in most modeler's eyes, is "reasonable"?

I fly a 1/4 scale Fokker Dr.1. It has a 72" wingspan, and weighs 14#. It's powered by a Zenoah G-23 swinging an 18" wooden prop. It's a relatively slow plane. Although it is "giant scale", it's no larger than most .60/.90-sized models, and, IMO, no more dangerous. Do I need a lot of redundancy in my plane or rules to follow? No, I just use common sense safety practices and follow the guidelines that are already in place.

Stop, sit back, and look at the circumstances of this one isolated incident. Look at the great safety record the AMA and IMAA both have already. PLEASE think about the ramifications of your thoughts and actions on every modeler, not just a specific few flying specific planes.

Tom, not all accidents are preventable. That's why they're called accidents. Not everything can be prevented by rules.

Dr.1 Driver "There's a Hun in the sun!"

No Kidding? What was your first clue?

So fly alone! I'm sure many would be grateful to you for that!

There are a great many more people flying full scale than models. And a great many more miles being traveled by human occupied full scale than by models. It would make sense that more die from full scale activities. More kids die playing little league baseball than die flying models. But it makes such tragedies as this no less important! Except maybe to people who view one or even a few lives as insignificant! You wouldn't be one of those by chance would you D.H.?

No! I'm simply stating that considering the number of poor attitudes one can find here, I'm surprised we haven't heard about such an accident sooner. Be it related to attitude or not. I'm actually surprised it took as long as it did.

Hi

When I was younger, apart from flying RC model aircraft, my other hobbies ranged from exploring caves and potholes (spelunking in the USA??) to hang-gliding and hot air ballooning - alas, I am now too long in the tooth and arthritic for anything too energetic.

The only - I repeat ONLY - pastime my wife really hated me doing was flying model aircraft as that was the one activity she regarded me most likely to arrive home injured (not counting frequently cutting my hand open with a modelling knife whilst building planes).

I genuinely cannot remember ever injuring myself doing anything "extreme" (I was once rescued from a very deep pothole but only because some bast##ds had stolen our ladders) whereas I have lost count of how many stitches I have had in my hands at various times from absent-mindedly sticking my fingers through model propellers. Eventually I mounted a starter on my flight box so that nowadays I never have to reach over the prop to adjust anything.

Regards

KGB

While this incident is unfortunate, and I do pray for a speedy recover

for the gentleman who suffered injury, I tend to agree with DR1.

First, there is, as I've seen so far, no 'smoking gun' to point to wh the accident happened. Not that it would happen ever, but IF anothe radio on the same frequence got turned on, that would have or coul have caused the crash. How do you make rules and legislate (within th community) against stupidity?

As Mr. Hayden specified, the airplane travelled 300 feet to th incident, and I'll assume that Mr. Rowe probably didn't have his ten set up right next to the runway. So, while unfortunate, this event wa probably in full compliance with all AMA safety rules and regulations.

Our club is hosting our annual FunFly in a couple of weeks, an notification has been made that all transmitters will be locked up i you aren't flying, which is a good thing! That could prevent a instance like this from happening.

Now, I don't know that a radio being turned on caused this. From th information, there's no way to know. It could have been a receive failure, or transmitter failure, or a servo failure, or the pilot jus lost it. We will have to wait for more information, just like the NTS does in any full sized airplane crash. The results may never be know in this incident.

However, creating more and more levels of rules creates two things: It creates people who intentionally break the rules. This in and o itself may not be dangerous, as the rules may be overly burdensome, bu if you break one rule, then it sets a pattern to break others, an eventually, someone may break one that is there for a very goo reason.

Secondly, if you create over restrictive rules, and you really enforc them, then you'll have people walking away from the community and th sport, and eventually it will be safe because there'll only be th empty fields where we used to fly.

Who can say 'rubber band powered balsa planes?'

Gar

-- GaryMC

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Rather than jumping off the deep end in a rant, how about looking at the statements in a logical manner.

What most people are trying to say is that this was a tragic ACCIDENT and knee-jerk reactions calling for a bunch more rules and changes aren't specifically warranted. An invetigation into what actually happened and determining ways to minimise the chances of it happening again are what is needed.

Snip

Rubber band power can also bite the unwary.

Malcolm

>

I am one of Casey's good friends. He is making a good recovery at Metr

in Cleveland. Although the last two weeks have been hell, they ar really taking good care of him. We wheeled him outside yesterday fo the first time in two weeks. He is in rehabilitation of the leg and i expected to go home this week. He thanks God every day that he i alive, and does not want anybody to have to go through what he has gon through.

Casey and I talked about the ramifications of this accident on th modeling community. I told him of my concern of the governin organizations taking advantage of this to arbitrarily increase rule and regulations on the modelers. He said that he would make sure tha this accident does not lead to random and unnecessary rules bein applied to us. In other words, based on our discussions, he woul probably agree with most of the statements in this post. He accepts th fact that was unfortunately in the wrong place at the worng time.

Casey is pushing for the following recommendations to modelers (an governing organizations) in wake of the accident:

1. metal geared servos on larger aircraft.
2. PCM receivers on large aircraft with them programmed to kill engin at loss of signal.
3. in the case of non-PCM large aircraft, a secondary system to kil engine in the event of a signal failure. But he is reccomending tha all alrge aircraft have a PCM receiver with engine cutoff programmed.

Casey has made it crystal clear that he does not want to see an impac on the community in the form of rules and regulations beyond this. H has made this clear to Tom Hayden by phone, who has also talked t Dave Brown.

When you are around airplanes, you have to accept some risk. Th airplane that hit Casey was flying on its own and made three left turn before hitting Casey at full power, completely ignoring the operator' commands. It's one in a ten million chance of being hit. Post-acciden checks revealed no problems with the any of the systems.

There is risk in everything. If you don't want the risk, then live in cave, and prevent yourself from growing as a person and experiencin things that make you happy. More rules and regulations are no necessarily going to help, but really just hinder us. We have to fin smart ways, not easy ways, to solve problems. And we have to weigh th benefits of doing something over the risk of doing it.

There is risk in everything. We ran into a guy in the spina rehabilitation section on Casey's hospital floor. He was reading a boo one night in bed, dozed off, fell out of bed, hit is head lightly o the nightstand, twisted his nick slightly, heard a pop, and now he i paralized from the waist down and his hands (but not arms)

-- teryn

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I am very sorry that some one has been hurt, but please when looking to implement change in RC flying rules, look beyond the past. IMO, PCM is redundant old technology from which a number of avoidable crashes have been witnessed and does nothing in the event of switch or power failure. PCM is slow to pull in and out of failsafe, especially passing over live electric fences when on take off or landing approaches. OK for use in smaller models, Helicopters etc to use up old equipment held in stock. For the new models and when buying new equipment, the new Hitec, Multiplex and some other digital servos can be individually programmed, each with own built in failsafe or use a dual conversion receiver, or especially the new IPD or PLL based receivers, with a programmable failsafe unit, in need, to each old fashioned non programmable servo as supplied by Futaba or JR servo. e.g.

brands will have IPD and/or PLL synthesised TX Modules and receivers on all the popular frequencies before the end of this year. Crystal based technology has to much room for drift and error - how often do club members actually have their TX and crystals checked for accuracy or drift after being turned on for a few minutes? Larges strides have been made in electronic technology since the advent of the cell phone. Why not question why the fliers of large expensive models do not look forward out side the square and test the new equipment = most expensive or old name brand does not necessarily mean it is still the best equipment today as one may observe reading latest safety tests of motor vehicles. regards Alan T. Alan's Hobby, Model & RC Web Links

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No it isn't.

You work on safety most where there is greatest danger to the most people..

You don't e.g. put a crash barrier on the side of a goat track halfway up Everest on the offchance a motorist will need it.

Members of minority sports are expected to know what they are doing.

Dunno. I reckon that D-I-Y is the cause of most accidental injury, after RTA's.

I've cut my hands on those too - plastic props still hurt.

And sliced bit off my fingers building them.

I agree with you Alan but am more surprised that so many people seem to fly "old-fashioned" PPM FM systems with no kind of failsafe at all.

I've been trying to get across to people that there's absolutely no reason on earth why anyone should spend good money on a 20th century receiver when 21st-century technology is now readily available at what is often a lower price.

Receivers from the likes of FMA, Berg and others now offers computer-based smart decoding that provides an very useful margin of protection against interference or even idiots who turn their transmitters on in the pits without checking that the channel is free.

That companies like Hitec continue to sell "dumb" PPM receivers to an unsuspecting public is little short of outrageous!

A Hitec 555 costs around US$53 plus $8 for a crystal. The smaller, lighter, and far more interference resistant Berg or FMA receiver costs just $50 *with* a crystal and provides far more protection against being shot down.

With modern models weighing more and flying faster than their predecessors, and with the RF spectrum becoming increasingly crowded, I seriously wonder whether the sale of new dumb PPM receivers ought not to be outlawed.

No doubt many people will say "but I fly with a Hitec (or other dumb receiver) and have never had any problems with glitches or interference) -- but trust me, it's only a matter of time before someone in the pits shoots you down or some random burst of noise hits your model just a you're lining up on final approach or takeoff.

If it was just the increased risk of losing a model that was associated with these old-fashioned receivers then I'd say we should let people take whatever risks they want -- but, as recent events have shown, it's also about the safety of the public and other modellers.

Maybe all those flying dumb PPM receivers ought to think long and hard about how they'd feel if they were in the position of someone whose model had just seriously injured or even killed someone in a situation that could have been prevented by the use of a $50 receiver with built-in interference rejection and/or failsafe facility.

Few modellers are prepared to fly without public liability insurance

-- but let's not forget that updating your receiver to one that can reject interference and provide a failsafe capability is also an extremely valuable piece of insurance against needing to make a claim on your liability policy.

An insurance polcy pay-out won't bring back a life.

-- Yes it's true, I really am crazy! Look what I'm doing now

you can contact me via

YEA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Dr.1 Driver "There's a Hun in the sun!"

| I've been trying to get across to people that there's absolutely no | reason on earth why anyone should spend good money on a 20th century | receiver when 21st-century technology is now readily available at what | is often a lower price.

Of course, what you say is 21st century technology actually came out of the 20th century, but I digress ...

| That companies like Hitec continue to sell "dumb" PPM receivers to an | unsuspecting public is little short of outrageous! | | A Hitec 555 costs around US$53 plus $8 for a crystal. The smaller, | lighter, and far more interference resistant Berg or FMA receiver | costs just $50 *with* a crystal and provides far more protection | against being shot down.

I certainly like my FMA M5s (about half of my planes have them now), and I like the price, and I do like their glitch rejection, but I'm not acting under the deluded impression that they provide `far more protection against being shot down'.

They will handle temporary glitches much better, basically ignoring them. Longer glitches, and they'll just say put rather than having the servo bounce all over the place. But they don't provide that much protection against being shot down. If somebody else turns on their transmitter near you, and their signal is stronger than yours at the plane, your plane is going to crash -- I don't care how smart your receiver is.

Even those receivers that claim to respond only to YOUR transmitter (which smells of snake oil to begin with) and not going to save your plane in that instance.

| With modern models weighing more and flying faster than their | predecessors, and with the RF spectrum becoming increasingly crowded, | I seriously wonder whether the sale of new dumb PPM receivers ought | not to be outlawed.

Just what we need ... more laws.

Did you know they still sell AM receivers too? And things like the Hitec Feather are even worse than the receivers you're referring to.

| No doubt many people will say "but I fly with a Hitec (or other dumb | receiver) and have never had any problems with glitches or | interference) -- but trust me, it's only a matter of time before | someone in the pits shoots you down or some random burst of noise hits | your model just a you're lining up on final approach or takeoff.

... not that your FMA or Berg or even PCM receiver is going to save you from this reliably. It might help if the noise lasts a very short time, but only then.

| Few modellers are prepared to fly without public liability insurance

I wouldn't say that. Certainly, many park fliers are flown by people with no liability insurance.

| -- but let's not forget that updating your receiver to one that can | reject interference and provide a failsafe capability is also an | extremely valuable piece of insurance against needing to make a claim | on your liability policy.

And none of the PPM receivers that you've mentioned have failsafes at all. At best, if they can't pick up a signal anymore, they just stay where they were. Which is good, but not ideal.

What we really need is spread spectrum radio equipment. That won't make all the interference issues go away at once, but it will certainly remove the largest problem immediately -- that of another modeler turning on his transmitter on the same frequency as yours. But there's political (not technical) issues that need to be overcome, and I've gone into them before so I won't do so again now.

You make some excellent points, Doug. I've always said that most planes can fly through INTERMITTENT interference. CONTINUOUS interference (someone switches on your channel) will shoot down ANYTHING, unless there's another RX in the plane, another pilot standing by with another TX, and the ability to switch to another channel IMMEDIATELY.

Failsafes either go to a preset position, or return everything to neutral. Either one can save your plane or crash it into a house.

|Even those receivers that claim to respond |only to YOUR transmitter How do they do that, Mr. Wizard? :)

I sorta resent the claim that Hitec (and others, I assume) are inferior. Yup, I'm one of the ones who has flown Hitec and FMA RXs for many years without a single problem. I also fly Futaba with no complaints. Either the RX meets the FCC criteria, or it doesn't. If it does, it's probably good enough for 99.9% of the flying sites around the country.

As I've said, some accidents are probably NOT preventable.

| I seriously wonder whether the sale of new dumb PPM receivers ought | not to be outlawed. Let me know when this happens, I'll run out and buy a passle of'em! I agree with you, Doug...more laws? That's EXACTLY what we need!!!

Electronics are neither dumb or smart. They do what they're told to. What's dumb is someone switching on your channel without checking the board.

Dr.1 Driver "There's a Hun in the sun!"