Last week one of the guys at the field was flying his stick, controlled by a DX7. He hollered he didn't have it. It was coming right at the flight line at low throttle with wings level. It floated over the pavilion, past the parking lot and landed unfortunately into the front side of a knoll. Had it gone ten more feet it would have crested the knoll and landed on the back slope and probably suffered no damage.

The flight pack had obviously gone into fail save with all controls going neutral and the throttle to idle with the pilot trying until the end to recover. With the pieces back on the bench... the batteries checked fine and once turned back on, everything worked fine and it ranged checked ok. But... a few days later, it failed a range check on another airplane. It had previously had a range problem and been sent for repairs and worked ok for about three months. The owner said he will trash the transmitter... it will never be trustworthy to him again.

There is little doubt that at least three... maybe four planes were lost either due to the transmitter or something the guy was doing wrong. The stick was the only one he had fail save set on and it is repairable. The rest spun in. So... set the fail safes... at least when they go low throttle, it is a quick warning that something is amiss. and as in the case last week, damage was lessened.