realdeal

My Feedback: (45)

As a person who owns 2 turbine aircraft that do not have a prayer of exceeding 200mph downhill with a tail wind I am ADAMANTLY opposed to adding a point of failure to my aircraft. That is all it would be in my case. It would never activate since my planes do not approach the limit but by being in the control loop it could certainly fail and cause the destruction of my model. My aircraft are much more the norm than the exception.

The AMA really needs more data on the actual speeds being regularly attained by turbine aircraft before they move forward with any type of limiter requirement. If they send representatives to jet events to collect speed data and find that only 10 percent of the models are exceeding 200 mph ( I suspect that is about the right number) then they have just increased the likelihood of a failure and crash in the other 90 percent. That is NOT a good risk management move.

Even if many of the 90% staying under 200mph have aircraft capable of exceeding the limit it is still NOT a good risk management decision. You have just taken a significant portion of the control of that aircraft away from the best computer ever devised and put it in under the supervision of $10 worth of plastic and metal. A good policy would effectively curb those who exceed the limit while not increasing the risk for those who do not.

If they want to stick with a 200mph limit we could easily come up with a system like they use in IHRA drag racing. Your car must have a certain level of safety equipment based on the time and speed of your timed run. Once you make a single run that drops into the next level you must upgrade your equipment.

For turbines it would require having a radar gun available at events. If a plane is running without a speed limiter and the plane appears to be close to the limit we put a radar gun on it. If the plane is exceeding 200 then the pilot is put on notice and has a certain amount of time to add the limiter. If nothing else the threat of having this happen is more incentive for pilots not to push the speed envelope.

Alternatively we could approach this much more like the FAA does. Put the onus on the pilots to stay within the rules and have enforcement options with teeth if they break them.

EC120

I still don't understand how you guys are viewing the AMA. The ama has rules and if you don't follow them then the AMA does not cover you. So if one wanted to they could violate all the AMA rules and the result would be that the AMA does not cover the incident they might cause. If on a club field then there could be other actions taken including the loss of membership. My club has more teeth than AMA does because I like to fly there. So Tiano can break the 200mph barrier and if he is on his property than so what? I follow the safety rules at my club. But I can go in my back yard and ignore them all. AMA is my secondary insurance anyway. The only punishment I would get for my actions in my back yard is from paying a higher deductible. If the AMA rules get too restrictive the only result would be less people joining the AMA. I don't want someone not involved in my areas of the hobby making rules based on perceived danger. Rules against actual danger are fine. I am not promoting reckless behavior. It is just that I don't see the teeth the AMA is supposed to have and the more they attempt to gain teeth then the weaker they would get. I remember talking to a guy that wanted a gas turbine after seeing them fly. I told him that he would need to do the ama requirements before he could fly it. He asked why. I told him that is was required if you wanted to be covered. He already had insurance to protect him and it didn't care what he did with it. I told him he would need it to fly at the local field. He said he didn't want to fly at the local field and already had an area suited for it. He did plan on getting checked out on it by another turbine pilot. But I couldn't think of any real reason for him to care what AMA was? Maybe common sense safety rules but you don't need to join to get a copy of those rules. He lost interest in the idea of getting a turbine eventually but not until he got bored with the simulator. That seems a little nutty to me with the perspective I have now but when I got my first RC aircraft I didn't know what AMA was either. It wasn't until I found a club that I joined AMA and only because it was required.