I fly with a Futaba 9C. Recently, I had a module fail, leading to intermittent lock-ups when flying, but I was able to successfully land my airplane. I had had a few glitches previously, but I thought that that was due to mechanical noise. I did some tests and was sure that the module was to blame. I replaced the module with a synthesized module and have had success.

I fly on a flight sim a lot, and plug in my transmitter to the interface cable. The transmitter turns on just like as if it were a buddy box, not transmitting. I never took the module out, as I never knew there was a reason to. I was told that this is what killed my module. Should I be removing my module when using the sim? The transmitter, as I understand it, is in the same situation when on the sim as when being used as a buddy box. So why doesn't the manual say to remove the module when using the transmitter as a buddy box? It's not transmitting, so where would the harmful RF energy be coming from? Is it bad for the transmitter to be on without a module plugged in?

Thanks in advance.