Originally Posted by
mongo
this will not be popular for most folk, but it is what i have done since real failsafes came available to us decades ago:
fixed wing: throttle to full idle/kill, all other controls to full positive snap inputsrotorwing: throttle to hold/kill, all others ail and rud to neutral, ele to full back.
this has worked, everytime it has been needed to keep an aircraft from flying away
I'm glad that meets your needs. I would not impose it on others without statistics showing how often loss of signal occurs and for how long. One size does not fit all.
My fail safe settings for power planes are generally set to the factory default: Hold the last position at signal loss. That gives me the best chance to regain control of the model, in which case I can direct it to a safe area or simply resume flying. I could support a fail safe which would "dump" it after signal loss persisted for an extended time -- say 10 or 15 seconds.
For sailplanes, I set my fail safe to motor off, full crow (flaps down/ailerons up) and full up elevator. This should put the model into a slow speed descent. With neutral spiral stability it will fall off on a wing anyway, no reason to force it. This doubles as a "thermal escape" mode.