Fail-safe settings for control surfaces

[vicenterc at comcast.net]

Long ago, I lost signal in my Hydeout doing slow roll.  The plane has pull-pull steel wires for elevator and rudder.  I lost the plane when the antenna was behind the wires during the slow roll.  I have the fail safe programmed to go idle and maintain controls in the last position.  The plane keep rolling slowly with the engine at idle until the antenna change position to "see" the TX directly and I regained control.  That was scary.  It took few seconds but felt like one hour.  I had time to rise the radio and check if the radio was on.  

My solution was to change the antenna to the outside of the fuselage since was installed inside.  Now, all my planes have the antenna outside due to that problem.  I know that we can install the antenna inside without problems but I feel a lot more secure and confident having the antenna outside since the reception is better.   I never had the problem again and the plane is still active.

Regards,

Vince
-------------- Original message -------------- 

Rick,
    My Prophecy went into failsafe (idle and hold for all other channels) and came out after about a second ( it seemed like an hour ).  I suspect interference but was not able to find any one month later using the district 6 scanner.
Paul
----- Original Message ----- 
From: Rick Kent 
To: discussion at nsrca.org 
Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2005 9:08 AM
Subject: Re: Fail-safe settings for control surfaces


It would be interesting to see statistics on how often a plane comes out of failsafe and the pilot regains control before meeting with Mother Earth. It's never happened for me, but admittedly, I don't use the feature often. Had two sport airplanes go into lockout when I did use it, and I watched both spin in.
I agree a spin recovery isn't the easiest thing to execute down low when you're in a panic, but I'd venture to say it would buy you more time than being in a vertical dive while in lockout would--IF the receiver recovers signal in time. I think it just comes down to dumb luck really, in what attitude/altitude the plane is in when the lockout occurs. The question is what are the odds that your plane would only go into lockout in level flight vs. the middle of a snap, roll, inverted dive, etc. Assuming worst case scenario, i.e., no signal recovery, the spin at least puts the plane back on the field so you can find it, and hopefully the spin would serve to somewhat lessen the descent speed at impact. Maybe a flat spin would be better in that regard.

My luck with such things dictates that it doesn't really matter what I plan for--the plane's going in, and hard.

Rick
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