Thoughts on safety ppl are calling for after Casey Rowe

I have no problem with manufacturers changing receivers to always cut throttle if they lose signal. To me it's not all that different from back when the narrow band started. It sounds good, and sounds safer. Just don't try to sell me a $50 piece of equipment (per reciever) until thet are all done replacing them.

Casey did say one thing that bothered me. He said that carbon fiber props should be for competition only. To me this creates a bad picture of some pilots being allowed something that the majority are not. Reality is that if everyone flies wood props, then a competition would be plenty fair anyhow. There is no sense in letting a "competition pilot" or a "competition plane" use carbon and nobody else. Then you get into defining the two terms. Does one contest make me a contest pilot? Can I fly carbon props now? I would certainly think that a truly competitive pilot would want to practice with the exact equipment he would compete with, so he would no doubt, fly the carbon most of the time.

It's silly. The prop did nothing wrong, just as the pilot did nothing wrong. Accidents happen, PERIOD. Heck, lets just ban gasoline engines. They create the torque that turns the prop that almost killed Casey! Heck no, just ban giant scale totally. Let's all just get out safety glasses on, wear our kevlar suits, and go fly our rubber powered, Nerf constructed, 3 second duration free flight planes. Then we will all be safe.

Jeeze! It was an accident. If Casey had been severely injured in a car accident, on the way to the field, would someone ban the type of steering wheel he has? Maybe they could make the steering wheel "for competition driving" only, and not allow any other driver from having it.

This is really silly. :roll:

Maybe it was just me but in the interview that was posted that Casey did it seemed to me the interviewer did all he could cast the problem as .....there was just not enough safety. Maybe Im reading it wrong I dont know. Like Frank said if it was a car wreck what would happen? Basically nothing? Should we ban cars because thousands a of people a year die in them? Do we put a blow tube on every car because a few people drive drunk? Dont get me wrong Im all for safety I just think we see a knee jerk reaction to the accident. It reminds me a lot of Jim Brady after he was shot. Ever since then he has lobbied for gun control which is not bad in itself but you cant legislate out all types of danger. At what point do we start putting a backup kill on the kill switch? Its just an electric component as well it may fail too. I know this is a little rambling but my concern is that those who have direct acces to AMA officials be involved so that we dont find ourselves in a situation where rules are passed that are hard to deal with or are unreasonable. Why bother with AMA if we are just going to break there rules? OK more questions then answers I know but just a few thoughts I had.

TailTwister said:

I have no problem with manufacturers changing receivers to always cut throttle if they lose signal. To me it's not all that different from back when the narrow band started. It sounds good, and sounds safer. Just don't try to sell me a $50 piece of equipment (per reciever) until thet are all done replacing them.

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I've switched from using plain PPM receivers to receivers that have "smart" decoders after having some problems at my field and I'm really impressed with the results.

I can't beileve that people are still paying *good* money to buy "dumb" FM/PPM reveivers (like those sold by Hitec and others) when, for *less* money you can buy receivers like the Berg and FMA SMART series of receivers.

The smart decoders in these receivers are bloody marvelous!

If you get hit by a burst of interference with a regular dumb PPM receiver your servos usually twitch and your plane (especially a 3D ship) will gyrate wildly around the sky -- driven by those random servo movements.

If you're near the ground at the time then there's a bloody good chance you'll end up with a bag-o-bits or that someone could be injured.

Get hit by the same burst of interference with one of these "smart" receivers and the odds are that you'll barely notice it because the decoders in these sets rejects the invalid data that the noise produces.

In the absolute worst case -- ie: when there's no valid data able to get through the intereference, these receivers will hold the servos at their last valid position until more valid data is received or, with the slightly mroe expensive units, move the servos to a predetermined failsafe setting.

Now if these "smart" receivers were more expensive than my old Hitec 555 or Supreme 7 receivers I'd still buy them -- but the fact is that they're actually *cheaper*.

The FMA M5 costs just $50 (with crystal) and the Berg DSP II costs just $52 (with crystal). The Berg has the added advantage that it auto-senses the transmitter shift so is compatible with JR and Futaba without any adjustment at all.

These two receivers are also *incredibly* small and light -- making the Hitec 555 (and even the Electron) look and weigh like an oversized brick.

There are those who also claim that flying PPM using a "smart" receiver is actually better than PCM insomuch as when hit by interference, PCM requires a whole frame of valid data to be received before it will pass the control inputs on to the servos whereas these receivers will pick out the individual signals for each servo and pass them on if they're found to be valid. As a result, a smart receiver will keep delivering a degree of control long after a PCM one has gone into failsafe.

Having experienced the advantages in real life at first hand I'm sold on these brilliant little receivers. All my Hitecs now live in a box under the bench and it's very unlikely that they'll ever return to the air.

Well, my thoughts on this are easily figured out, as the good conservative, self guided guy that I am. Since I believe in being responsible for our own actions, and that we take risks every day, it seems obvious to me that there is NO RULE or SAFETY device that could ever prevent all accidents. Goes right back to the rule 9 arguement, how long 'til we become a static display hobby?

The idea of shutting off the engine sounds good at first, but let me ask this question: We all see interference on a regular basis, some worse than others. If the engine shuts off EVERY time you see interference, that would be a lot of dead sticks. If all those interference incidents become dead sticks, are we safer? Or do we now have Many, Many more planes falling from the sky?

Of course you might say "We only want the engine to go to Idle", OK, so now we have a temporary loss of power, and seconds later the throttle returns to where it was before. Plane flying straight and level, gets interference, engine at idle, planes starts to fall, engine comes back, plane now powered and pointed down: BAD!!!

OK, here's reality at work: We had a new thing, the CAR. Everybody got one, Then they started hitting each other, they started hitting trees, that sort of thing. Many people started dying, so the powers-that-be said: Could this be stopped? So they invented seatbelts. I choose to wear one, and it saved my life once.

But ONCE, a man was walking down the road, and a bird hit him square in the temple, and he died. FREAK ACCIDENT!! They COULD have said "Ok, to prevent this from ever happening again, it is now a law that you must wear a hard hat whenever you walk out of doors." But of course, any sensible person can see that there was no reason to believe that this same thing would ever happen again. IT COULD, but it's VERY low on the list of things I'm worried about.

Now, we know that the majority of injury accidents happen on takeoff and landing, and generally very near the flightline (I'd have to go through MANY threads to find the source for this). So there is a good foundation to say that we will see this happen again. So someone says we should have separation, fences to separate onlookers from the action, and stations to protect the pilots. OH wait, we already have that. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, makes sense.

Sorry so long.

Gordo said:

OK, here's reality at work: We had a new thing, the CAR. Everybody got one, Then they started hitting each other, they started hitting trees, that sort of thing. Many people started dying, so the powers-that-be said: Could this be stopped? So they invented seatbelts. I choose to wear one, and it saved my life once.

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Well as you can see by the attached pictures, I'm a safety freak and believe that nobody should ever take any risks.

See the ultra-safe head-gear and the steel-toed safety sneakers in use here, plus note the fire-reisistant tee-shirt and extra thick 12-oz denim jeans.

Yes folks, I believe we should lock up everyone who takes any form of risk :->

So can I be the official ProBro safety officer eh? Come-on, please Mista!