And how did you KNOW you had enough battery power to land with? It only takes a couple of seconds for a load on almost-discharged nicads to drop them below operating volatage. I'm gonna vote for flying with not enough battery power as the first reason for your and your dad's problems. Another POSSIBLE reason is your radio (you didn't say which one you had) went into fail-safe because of interference. That's why I don't use fail-safe, you lose all control for a few seconds. The plane will usually fly through intermittent interference. Constant interference will crash your plane in any case, fail-safe or not. A third possibility could be you flew your plane directly off the tip of the TX antenna for a few seconds. The RF signal is weakest in this position. Low batteries would complicate this situation.

Dr.1