I've seen this same thing happen. Nathan King (RCU user name = NathanKing) was practicing with his 2M Icepoint airframe with O.S. Max 1.60 FX and Spektrum DX6i radio system just prior to our club's pattern meet last August.

He had a lot of problems with the radio installation despite meticulously testing and range checking his receiver and battery setup before flying. Nathan has literally been diagnosed with OCD, and his entire installation was way beyond a "by the book" setup, including a 2800MaH 6.0v NiMH receiver battery.

Nathan was still getting lock-outs with his pattern plane that were resulting in loss of control for several seconds at a time. He was extremely fortunate that they all occurred while either flying uplines or flying straight and level. After what turned out to be his last Spektrum controlled flight, Nathan recovered control after yet another lockout and quickly landed his plane.

Because of his haste, Nathan simply put the plane down as safely and quickly as possible down at the north end of our runway; it landed with the engine still running. Nathan was also working on fitting his tuned pipe setup, which wasn't quite perfect yet, and he couldn't shut the engine off from the radio. He had to block the pipe's exhaust tip to shut the engine off.

As Nathan walked out to the airplane, he left his DX6i transmitter sitting on a wooden starting table within line-of-sight of the idling aircraft. The antenna was perpendicular to the ground and not in any way pointed toward the plane. Just as Nathan got within 20 or 25 feet of his Icepoint, the 1.60 FX slowly started to rev up. Fortunately it was in the grass at the end of the runway and not on pavement. The wheels had just broken loose and the plane had just started rolling when Nathan ran up behind it and grabbed the tail of the aircraft.

I was standing near his radio holding my plane in two hands and nobody else was near it. Nathan looked back to see who had been jacking with his transmitter and realized that nobody had touched it. His beloved Icepoint, his pride and joy, had been about three seconds away from launching itself on a ghost flight over our parking lot and toward the lake.

Nathan went home the day before the pattern contest and yanked out his Spektrum DX6i radio setup and AR6200 receiver. He reinstalled his old Futaba R127DF receiver and reprogrammed his 72Mhz Futaba 6EX transmitter. That's the radio setup he actually flew at the pattern contest.

To this day, I don't know if Nathan has even attempted to fly his Spektrum radio system again.