Originally Posted by
init4fun
Andy , In the "unusual RC" section here at RCU I was reading of "RC Parachuting" the other day , and of the event that was being held at Muncie devoted to those who practice it . Gotta admit , I've been into RC a while , and never before had I heard of RC Parachuting until I read of it here the other day . I mention this only to say there are quite a lot of offshoots of our RC hobby and I will give the AMA credit for trying to be all inclusive . For real . My own personal feeling is that #550 FPV of course should be allowed , just like things like RC Parachuting are , but I favor #550 in it's original form where the pilot in command is LOS and the goggle wearing pilot is the trainer side of a buddy box . I just don't think in a , for instance , loss of video link situation the spotter is going to do much if the FPV pilot looses contact with the plane and has to pull the goggles off and gain sight and control of the model before it's demise . How many will instantly cede the TX to the spotter if the goggles go dark VS try to pull them off and regain control himself ? It's funny , when folks talk crashes it's always how a "radio glitch" crashed the plane , as if radio failure is such a common thing and yet when talking FPV it's always how "rock solid" the FPV link is and that the video downlink is absolutely infallible . I may be wrong , but It's my opinion that the FAA would be far more receptive of the original #550 VS the one we have now ....
Radio glitches, gotta love that one . Had our giant scale event this weekend and had 6 warbirds go in for one reason or another. Giant P-51 ran out of gas going downwind and had plenty of room to just glide down to a belly landing into short or tall grass. Nope, instead he tries for hard dive and turn into the wind for a short approach on the runway. As soon as he turned in his wing dropped and he literally fell out of the sky. I hear later that he says his 2.4 system got "shot down", perhaps a brown out. Um, no, not a single person there didn't realize what he did. As for the spotter issue, I don't think many will be able to "save" the pilot if something goes wrong, although I have seen a few cases of that at our field. For the most part though these MR units are not that high off the ground and tend to fall within feet of where they lose it.