Once again we see a serious safety issue being trivialised. Of course we are not going to be sucked bodily into one of our engines, pretty by obvious, but there are number of dangers associated with high rpms, high temperatures and increasingly high thrusts so they need to be treated with great caution and respect. It is, however, possible, that smaller items COULD be sucked into our engines which COULD cause a catastrophic and uncontained engine failure and I cringe when I see how some, a minority, of guys operate their engines, complacency doesn't even begin to describe it.

So far as the JetCat failsafe issue is concerned I see it this way. Many of our ruling bodies, BMFA, GTBA VMAA,AMA, etc., have made failsafe operation MANDATORY and for very good reasons not least minimising the risk to OTHERS, perhaps nothing to do with model jets, who may be placed in jeopardy in the event of a radio failure leading to a crash. Such a crash occurred in the UK a couple of years ago when jet model crashed into a house on the edge of an airfield and another jet crashed into a caravan at the British Nationals both, by the grace of god, without serious injury. A correctly set- failsafe could go a long way to minimising the risk of serious damage or injury and the software is in the ECU ! Despite this function being mandatory the factory in Germany has never even mentioned failsafe operation in their manuals (JetCat USA have done so for some years). Now, is that not complacency in its worst form and sometjhing which needs URGENT action. ?

I absolutely believe that not one more engine should pass to an end user UNTIL that deficiency is rectified and it should and could be done in a matter of days if not hours, IF the will is there. For the life of me I just cannot see why this glaring ommision has been allowed to continue for so long.

Regards,

David Gladwin.