Lee G,

Dr1 said it best. The most common cause of crash is the operator. I have been a avid RCer for 28 years now and I have never had a crash that wasn't my fault one way or another. If understood and treated properly, or equipment is plenty reliable.

I disagree that the battery is the weakest link. The battery is I think the most misunderstood and mistreated. Here are the important points. Properly charge. Don't overcharge. Use a battery with "adequate" capacity. My experience says battery capacity should be enough to give about 10 flights before stone dead. Fly at least 4 flights then cycle down the remaining capacity. There should be half left. And battery should be able to lose a cell and still give enough voltage. Contrary to what many will say, all cells in a pack don't just die at the same time. With the above margin, the decay is always detectable before causing a crash - IF you volt check with a good load of at least half C, before and after every flight. Don't look for a specific voltage so much as learn your voltage "trend". When that trend changes, check it out by cycling the battery. When you cycle check, charge then cycle, then charge and let the battery sit a few days then cycle. If the capacity measurement is significantly less after a few days of sitting, the battery is getting old. Excessive charging and cycling only reduces battery life. It's all about pack margin and monitoring for a consistent trend.

The weakest link in the system by far is the wiring, especially the cheep little connectors. Double up wherever possible. I don't think dual batteries provide more safety than one - if the above is strictly followed. Someone who does not understand batteries will mess up 2 just as fast as one. I have my packs made with 2 heavy gauge leads coming directly off the cell tabs. Then I connect 2 switches and plug these into 2 ports on the Rx. Now I have dual path redundancy. One switch on, if Rx comes to life that path is good. Alternate which switch goes on first each flight. A heavy duty switch with multiple contacts is not just as safe because there is no way to check each contact individually. With computers you can extend the redundancy further by running dual elevator and dual aileron channels. Just about every plane can be controlled just fine on one elevator or one aileron. Dual primary control channels gives redundancy to not only wiring, but servo, pushrod, links, hinges, all.

Protect Rx and battery from vibration. Most people don't do this near well enough. I wrap mine loosely with a layer of soft foam and layer of higher density. This impedes resonance. Then install LOOSLY within a box structure large enough not to compress the foam at all. This ensures minimum vibration transmission. Finally, if you care about the plane a lot, just replace the entire flight pack every 5 years or 500 flights, whichever comes first. Cheep insurance. The old stuff isn't bad, just don't fly your ???thousand dollar plane with it any more.

A little good sense goes a way long way. Watch out for over complicated schemes.

Multiflyer