RE: Futaba FASST feedback and TESTING
Very interesting re: the loss of the plane .. I assume you mean the switch to kill the turbine, not to open the canopy .. but I guess either one is bad at the wrong time!!!
I have heard of two precautions on this .. first is to put a short delay on the channel so you have time to react if you hit the switch by mistake, and realize it in time. With the 14MZ you can record a sound clip to happen when the switch is thrown, so the radio would say "Turbine shutdown" and then delay (minimally to stay in AMA rules) before actually cutting off. Interesting to figure out of the "oh my!, wrong switch, click" cycle can be accomodated by the delay and still keep the shutdown within AMA limits :-)
Next thought is to use the gear switch to enable/disable the use of the other control so that it only operates with the gear down .. obviously this is not a good idea for the turbine shutdown, which you need to do in an emergency in flight .. but would be a reasonable precaution to prevent opening the canopy in flight (at least most of the time) .. make it so the canopy can only open when the gear are down.
You could also require that two switches be hit for the turbine shutdown.
Or, of course, use a slider or the coarse trim steps!
Dave