I was involved in the US Coast Guard Differential GPS system in the 1990's. When visiting Coast Guard ships in the area, I would always preach 'NEVER EVER forget how to use the compass and the sextant". Good advice.. remember how to use that compass!!

I flew an electric Little Something Extra one day using a micro receiver. Well, it got out of range quickly because I was flying it like I would fly my regular RC aircraft. It just headed away from me and over the woods. I lost control one control at a time.. first to go was the ailerons, a moment later, the elevator... I immediately reduced the throttle to 0 and it went in, oh, about 200 yards beyond the tree line.

One of the other RC'ers stood at my flight line and pointed while I walked over to where it went in. The tree line is a good 200 yards from the flight line, and the plane went in a good deal past that. When I saw that I was pretty much lined up with where he was pointing, I walked in as straight as I could. After about 5 minutes of slow walking in as straight a line as I could, there it was, on the ground, with only a broken prop. Lucky me!!! I did not have neither a compass nor a GPS unit. As I said, lucky me!!!

I removed that micro receiver and put a standard channel 11 RX, and later, a DX7 receiver. It has the power for that added few grams of weight and I have all the range I could need.

CGr