After reading this, I have been moved to add another layer of safety to my blossoming turbine career. Just as I have a spare pair of hearing guards, I will go straight to wal-mart and buy an air powered blow horn to hand to my spotter along with the hearing protection......

After being dumbfounded at watching my turbine fall into the ground (engine was shut off when model was deemed uncontrollable) I was soooooo relieved that no one got hurt. I learned many lessons that day and today I have learned a few more. I will set all my prop airplanes to engine off with failsafe.

Just for thought, what if, we could make a speed and altitude limited parachute deployment upon failsafe? A speed sensor can be bought from jetcat. A gps that senses altitude is also available. Yes, these are expensive (cheaper technology is out there, just look at some of those awsome casio watches...) but, I would pay $400 to save anyones life! Even those people on RCU that just love to start fights!!!

With some luck, the parachute would slow the model down giving it a more predictable trajectory and if just tore the airplane in pieces, then maybe the resulting increase in cross section, would slow the pieces down.....But again, if this were to happen among a group of spectators, then this would transform one falling piece into many falling pieces, albiet smaller pieces with less mass!!

I wish I had the capitol, ingenuity and the time to design something like this. From what I've been able to gather, when these turbines go into failsafe, there is not much we can do to save them anyways.....

I suppose a solution would be to set failsafe to snap with a parachute deployment....The snap would slow the airplane down and the parachute would give it a predictable trajectory....

Hey, I think I'm on to something!!!

sorry, I'm just rambling...

But, truthfully, every flying day should be a day in which we can scrutinize, atleast, our own behavior into a safer one. Safe and happy flying to all.

Raf