I think that's an invalid assumption. All too often, people set failsafe to "hold" rather than to kill the engine. I've had endless debates with RC pilots about this, and there are unfortunately a very large contingent of people who think that if they just set "hold" then maybe the aircraft might be able to "fly through the interference" and they can re-establish control afterwards. They think only of how PCM can perhaps save the aircraft in some scenarios, not how it can perhaps save a life.

My wife was hit by a Midwest Hots that locked out at full throttle and up elevator, and the model did about half a dozen "strafing runs" looping through the pit area with people running around trying to get out of its way. She was in pain for months, and I tried to use that incident at the local club to convince people that their PCM setting should cut the engine, not hold the throttle, but you simply wouldn't believe how many people responded with "but if I kill the throttle, the aircraft will probably crash! I don't want that - this is an expenseive model !!". The incident with young Adam Kirby in the UK several years ago involved interference, with PCM being set to hold on a 60-sized pattern plane. The coroner's report, and the BMFA report that followed, both indicated that the "hold" PCM settings were an aggravating factor that contributed to Adam's death, and yet despite the fierce debates that that ignited, there are still leauges upon leagues of people who insisted that they did not want to set the failsafe to kill the engine because they refuse to think in terms of reducing the model's killing-power and can only ever focus on the "but I want the engine to keep running so that I can keep flying the model after the interference stops" pipe-dream.

You know what - if we did not have engine kill mandated in our turbine regs, I guarantee you that a bunch of turbine planes would also be flying without engine-kill being programmed. I simply don't know what approach is needed to get past the very closed mind-set that some people have towards failsafe settings.

It doesn't help that most PCM sets have "hold" programmed as the default. The BMFA asked manufacturers to reconsider this ; to my knowledge thusfar, there is only one manufacturer (JR) who has seriously looked into this.

Gordon

NOTE - I'm not saying that this guy did not have engine-kill programmed - just that I don't think it's valid to *assume* that he would have,