ORIGINAL: mike109

G'day

There are some places where it is just best not to fly RC planes. I used to fly at a field which was below a hill (we called it a mountain because Australia is not very tall) on which there were over 200 transmitters of various sorts from VHF and UHF TV transmitters, FM radio transmitters and lots of gigahertz phone and other links. One of the phone links ran through one end of our field and every now and then, people would have problems with radios when flying in that area.

If a RF receiver of any sort gets hit with enough RF energy out of its band, there can be problems. Possibly this was what was happening at our field but without a spectrum analyzer and a list of the frequencies present, it is very hard to say just what is going on.

The other problem we have had at our field is people playing with model cars using aircraft radios near the flying field. This is almost impossible to stop.

I have been lucky (touch wood) so far. I have used 29 Meg FM, 36Meg AM and FM and PCM and now three different types of 2.4 Gig (Spektrum, Hitec and Fly-Dream) and have not had any serious problems yet. My worst problem was recently at a fly-in. I was flying on 36 Meg and kept getting hit by someone else's radio. It was enough to make me land the plane in a wheat field. No damage.

The only 2.4 Gig problem I have seen was with some early Extreme Link 2.4 Gig gear. Two similar sets were flying and one shot the other down. The software has since been upgraded and there have been no problems since.

Our gear keeps getting better but it is and never will be totally fool proof. Fools are too darn clever.