Marc - reqarding your servo chatter, you might try moving the plane outside away from any house wiring. Sometimes the electrical fields from indoor house wiring can cause a servo to jitter.

Also, make sure the receiver antenna is separated as far as possible from the long servo wiring. Try tapeing it full length to a vertical balsa stick. Also, a range test would be good to do with the elevator servo disconnected. The servo jitter may be an indicator that the radio system will fail a range test. You may have a bad receiver or something.

Things like a separate battery for servos, optical isolaters and ferrite beads can prove helpful but are not always neccessary. To really be certain, sometimes an oscilloscope is helpful, and even then it often comes down to trial and error.

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GaryB - I've been in RC for over 40 years. I operated one of the first repair centers for digital radio systems for about ten years. I totally agree with mglavin. PCM is always a more reliable data transfer system than PPM.

When your friend lost aircraft near powerlines it could have been many things ; 1)Bad battery; 2) Bad receiver; 3) Bad transmitter; 4)Interference on the same channel etc. The biggest single cause of radio failure is the battery pack. PCM systems may somtimes go into some failsafe mode on battery fail. To say absoluletly that his loss was due to PCM isn't based on very solid evidence.

I don't mean to be argumentive, but a lot of newcomers read these threads and I get a little concerned that well meant, but somewhat incorrect information, could be unintentionally passed on to them. We should try to base our comments on facts as much as possible.

I do think each of our experences are important too and it's fine to pass them on so that everyone can voice an opinion and readers can draw their own conclusions.