ORIGINAL: The Ghost
aussiesteve,
If you look at our local regulations(MOP's) you will find that all spark ign engine powered aircraft have to have an ign cutof switch that can be operated by the transmitter to make them legal. I have seen a lot of people turn up at the field with gassers and then have a problem with landing because the engine increases the idel in flight because the engine is just not setup correctly.
Cheers
Yes - you bring up a good point on the rules for Heavy models. (Rules that were only recently changed).
[link]http://www.maaa.asn.au/maaa/mop/procedures/MOP015%20-%20%20Heavy%20Model%20Aircraft%20Inspection%20and% 20Oper.pdf[/link]
Absolutely. Rule 6.3.1.6 on page 8 of the Heavy Model MOP very clearly states that the Engine must be able to be shut down from the TX by an alternative means to the throttle control. No question of it.
Whilst off topic but in a similar vein, Rule 6.3.1.3 also clearly states that Battery redundancy is required.
However - those rules only apply to aircraft above 7kg dry weight. There are many planes out there with Petrol powered (and Glow powered) engines that are almost but not quite that weight (Including quite a few "50cc'ers").
As these are a 3 year certificate here (Does anyone keep a plane flying that long? - any pointers wil be well accepted please
) There are still a number of planes out there that hold valid certificates that were issued under the old rules. There are also no doubt some glow powered planes in the category, I wonder how they will implement this.
As I stated in my one of my earlier posts on this. I do use kills - certainly on anything 50cc and above and on a few of the airframes below that size. I have done so for a long time. Thing is I know of people that have been killed and others that have been seriously injured by getting hit by small (0.40 size) planes - my old club President was one of them - he has steel plates in his skull (an possibly not much else
) due to a 40 size hitting him when it went off air.
Where and how does the line get drawn?
I do support the use of killswitches that are TX activated. I also only use the best quality ones because I want them to work as intended - every time. There are plenty of examples of why I use that policy but it is really up to the individual in most cases. A faulty one can kill an engine and I have heard of a couple of cases where they failed to "on" (no brand names mentioned). Maybe we should use 2 of them in series in case that happens.