bevar

My Feedback: (27)

According to a couple of friends who were at the Nall this year, there were a lot of lock out crashes, not just Shui's jet. Most were non jet types and almost all of them were Futaba Faast.

Last year I was there and it was more evenly split between Specktrum and Futaba. For some reason this year was mostly Futaba they are saying.

No matter what, there were quite a few birds going in again this year from "radio failure".

Beave

Loopman

My Feedback: (195)

Hello, I'm still waiting for some some highly intelligent keeper of statistics to tell me how many crashes have occurred at Joe Nall prior to the 100% 2.4 era. I would wager that 72 has a much higher success rate than 2.4! I'll also wager that the Joe Nall environment has nothing to do with these crashes, nor does mirrored canopies, carbon fiber materials in the plane, or the alignment of the planets! 2.4 is inferior to the 72mhz environment, plain and simple! Some of you guys hit the nail on the head; saying that we were lucky no one was hurt, maimed or God forbid killed! I would not only revert back to "frequency board" standards but get rid of 2.4 at these events. This is serious enough that I am going to contact the FCC to make sure they are aware of these issues.

Happy Flying!

Loopman

VF84sluggo

My Feedback: (55)

Beave, you and CraigG, and a few others, have hit on what is probably the root cause here: The sheer number of radios clobbering the freq band at any given time.

Couple that with distance from the controlling radio with the jet flying away and near other now-stronger radio signals, AND the impossibility of always having one of the two relatively short antenna whiskers from the Futaba receiver in a position to have an unblocked signal path...well, no matter how superior FASST is to DSM (and IMO I think it is), it's not a stretch to see how a Futaba receiver can get overwhelmed.

I switched to Futaba over concerns with DSM, but even though the Futaba guys make fun of "all the remote antennas" with JR/Spek, the satellite antenna system sure seems like a better way to have the best chance of an unobstructed path between the tx/rx, as compared to two whiskers from the rx.

Seems like at your standard club field, with maybe two or three guys flying at once, maybe a couple of radios on in the pits as guys fiddle with their planes, barring user setup error or flying right beside high-tension power lines or something, whether it be JR/Spektrum, Futaba, Hitec, Airtronics, 2.4 seems to work very well. It all starts pointing back to the core problem being related to 'mega' events.

Dang...all this is making me think about chickening-out from KY Jets...

wildnloose

I disagree about 2.4 being inferior to 72.

But I do think that one may need to implement a transmitter impound of some sort, to limit the number of transmitters.

Not sure what you think the FCC will do, except to tell you to limit the number of transmitters...

Ron101

My Feedback: (22)

I can tell you at the 3 sites I fly before 2.4 every weekend it seemed somebody got a hit, lost there plane to interference or was shot down. Since 2.4 I've seen very little radio problems and the ones I have seen were all specktrum brown outs before they fixed that issue. Since that was fixed I can't remember the last time I've even seen a glitch. So from my experiance in my area it's crazy to say 72 mhz is better.

Tommygun

My Feedback: (2)

Well just goes to show you that maybe these $10,000+ airplanes aren't such a good idea after all. No matter what, you're still hinging the survival of the airplane on nothing more than low wattage radio waves. Even commercial UAVs aren't 100% immune from radio failure. Somehow or other the R/C hobby has morphed from having more or less disposable 4ch balsa airplanes into these aircraft costing more than a good used car, even with no guarantee of 100% reliable radio gear.

R/C Gypsy

Lets just think about the ODDs........If you just randomly select a thousand good pilots and watched them at their local flying field, during a busy week of flying.......... I'll bet you'd see as many crashes as you see a Joe Nall, and for many reasons, no matter what radio system they use.

The shock to our minds is that we put them all together, in one spot, at a big event like this![]

The EAA has a the worlds largest air show at Oshkosh every year, and they have about 60,000 plus operations during the week.....they always have some crashes, and unfortunalty, a few casualites also. There attention to safety is second to none, and it's just that the ODDs are it will happen.

The only way for it not to happen is to not fly........and none of want to do that.
If it wasn't for the daring maneuvers and those great pilots doing the long slow rolls....... what would get our blood pumping, right Shui?


Paul

VF84sluggo

My Feedback: (55)

Reminds me of a department head meeting back in my naval aviator days: the operations officer said we should fly more, the maintenance officer said we should fly less, and the safety officer said we shouldn't fly at all...

FILE IFR

Good luck asking the FCC about their awareness. I hear they don't want to be involved in that band on the spectrum.

The FCC doesn't regulate the 2.4 gig band.

If you've had enough of the '2.4 gig craze', start back on flying 72 megs where the FCC controls that band.

rhklenke

My Feedback: (24)

What BS. This thread fits the definition of "noise" - lots of bandwidth being consumed, but the information content is ZERO.

Bob

InboundLZ

My Feedback: (10)

Can I get a AMEN?

franklin_m

Sounds like some of my DH meetings as well!

I think my goal would be for more transparency on the design limits of the system(s) so that the RC community can make the same informed risk decisions we were able to make. I think that would be a huge step forward here.

FILE IFR

+1 and Amen.

LMAO, Loopy thinks there were 100 pilots with TXs on the flight line at Nall during the 72 meg days. .... without crashes to!

Gra55h0pper

Actually, a "friend of a friend" of mine knew a guy who flew control line. However, during one of his flights the link with his plane somehow degraded to the point where he lost elevator control...

He then switched to RC 2.4Ghz and has never lost elevator control since (only aileron...).

Loopman

My Feedback: (195)

Why on God's green earth would you want 100 pilots on a flight line???? That is so ridiculous I won't even bother to reply. As for the "noise" issue, aren't all these threads basically noise, as nothing is going to be done from any of my, yours or ours rantings! The major manufacturers have sunk so much money into 2.4 that to admit to any problems would be commercial suicide. And the guys who are being sponsored by them would have the support rug cut from under them. I believe the the one's who are claiming all the noise issues are mail order

Freddy

My Feedback: (3)

Many of you hit the nail on the head. Too many radios on at the same time! Simple as that. At these big events they have to insist again on some kind of TX impound. Luckily nobody got killed. Just read Shulman's comment regarding his heart in his throat when going to look for his airplane. I am sure 2.4 GHz is fine. Myself I am still flying on 72MHz (since 1975) and still use the frequency clip control honor system. What SHOULD BE ILLEGAL is that some events (I saw this in pattern) ONLY allow 2.4GHz even though the AMA allows 72MHz usage!

FILE IFR

Very true, and some sanctioned events get away with it.... and they shouldn't.

I blame it on the sponsoring club(s) loving the idea of no TX impound at their event.

StevL

A quick question. We were recently binding a new DX8 to several airplanes, two had the new X Rx and the rest were DSM2. When we went into binding the Tx screen would say; Binding to DSM2 at 1024 resolution, on the new X Rx it would then say Binding to DSMX at 2048 resolution (or something very similar).

How does the Tx know what it's binding to if the Rx doesn't communicate at least during the bind process?

Thanks,
Steve

Tired Old Man

My Feedback: (1)

There are user defined settings for this feature. If the use fails to modify the factory defaults the tx will shut down after a predetermined period of inactivity. Those flying for long periods using a Futaba tx as the master tx in a master/slave buddy box arrangement are usually the ones that learn this the hard way.

Read the manual.

gruntled

Good question. I do not know the answer. Perhaps with DSMx there is now some kind of 2-way communication. Perhaps by virtue of not getting an answer back from the rx, the tx assumes DSM2?

off2fly

My Feedback: (11)

I noticed a lot of people flying little park flyers all over camping areas and such,even though radios were supposed to be off unless at flight station. Wonder if this might have some bearing?[&o]

drumbum

My Feedback: (1)

Probably not constidering there were a hand full flying off the lake. at least 5 at a time on the 3D line and a few helis on the heli line and 4 or 5 at a time on the E-line added to the flying at the main line . most of the so called park flyers were indoor planes and were flying close to dark when the above 2 mph wind wasn`t effecting them. none of the crashes im aware of were at this time.

jfetter

This is a catch-22, if the signal dropped enough to warrant a warning, the RX woudn't ba able to transmit back to the TX to "warn" you...

Jack

David Gladwin

Wrong. The setting for a warning is variable (0-100%) by the user, (I use 50 %, never a problem ) and Weatronics users can take a look at the whole frequency band by using the a monitor supplied with the radio, by connecting their transmitter by a cable to a laptop loaded with Giga Control. Just another aspect of this system which places it so far ahead of the others. And just to be clear, no, I am NOT a rep, I chose and exclusively use this equipment purely because of its technical merit and capabilities which if Shui had been using it (just as he had to do in Northern Ireland at the JWM with David Mears' Sabre, ) he would no longer be trying to figutre out the cause, he could have made a full anlaysis from data downloaded and recorded on the SD card.

Interestingly my Wea. manual says the limit is 100 sets on the assigned 2.4 band. I would certainly like to see any flight logs recorded by any Weatronics users at this event with the possibilty that more than 100 sets were transmitting simultaneously.

Regards,

David Gladwin.

Moerig

The RX transmits during bind.