Jeffpro,

As Bill touched on, if you are going to fly multiengine, then you should learn to fly with an engine out. There is no such thing as an engine that won’t quit eventually. If someone says there is, they haven’t flown it enough yet! When one fails, you can always just throttle the remaining engine(s) back and dead-stick in, but learning engine out flying is fun. It’s another challenging skill and aspect of aircraft performance to keep the hobby interesting.

There are many different ways to set up dual throttle channels. Some radios have dual throttle mixing already made up. The 9C has a "throttle needle" mix intended for in flight mixture control. This is basically a second channel moving with the throttle stick, so it can also be used for dual throttles as the 9C manual mentions. Set the needle channel menu adjustments to give standard servo throw for the needle channel (second throttle). I think the default settings are already there. Then this menu never needs to be revisited. Make all throw adjustments for each engine the normal way using sub-trim and end-point menus for each channel. Alternately you could slave up the second throttle channel by using a programmable-mixer, but then you would have to set up the second throttle travel using the p-mix adjustments. This gets a little more complicated because of the different things they can do.

After you have dual throttle channels working, add any additional features by employing more p-mixers. Basically you build the additional features you want using the generic programmable mixers (P-mix). All depends on your imagination. Also the p-mixes can be switched on/off allowing you to activate/deactivate whatever you dream up.

For engine-out training I recommend a setup similar to Bill’s, but including fingertip adjustment and eliminating the “hard” switching. Make it so either engine can be throttled back individually from the full throttle position only. I like to use each side slider lever as the master for this. Then use the throttle stick “soft” switch to activate these mixes only when at full throttle. This way you can fly up high at full throttle, then slide either engine power back only as much as you can handle. If you get into any trouble, just push the slider forward again or simply throttle back (the main throttle stick) a bit to disengage. A setup like this directly teaches the 2 most important things - how to fly with imbalanced thrust, and that throttling back removes the problem.

It is lots of fun, and the Twinstar is a great trainer for this, but CG it a little farther forward than the instructions recommend. The stock position makes it a bit pitch sensitive for easy engine out training. Let us know how it works out?

Multiflyer