Originally posted by beepee
Jim,
I applaud your willingness to immediately put you airplane in the ground in the event of a radio hit....
Don't applaud too quickly, the aircraft will only be lost if signal loss is of long duration...
This is a common mis-understanding with how PCM behaves. A short duration glitch will likely go unnoticed to most unfamiliar with pcm. To those familiar with PCM, intermittent or short duration interference is experienced as a general "notchy" feel as the servos fail to respond to dropped (corrupted) frames.
Fail-safe is not engaged until after a long (in radio terms, several frames) duration of lost signal. Even then, when good signal is received, the receiver responds almost immediately (~2-3 frames I understand). I've been "hit" before and managed to save the aircraft, truly scary but less drastic than an out-of-control situation I would have had with ppm. I believe the superior selectivity of pcm saved me that time as I recovered control and managed to land to seek out the offending signal (transmitter turned on in the parking lot).
BTW, battery-low fail-safe (as mentioned above) is a common feature on must radio brands including my brand ... JR.
RE: Heli configured Tx go for it. I fly with the heli layout and prefer it.