today i was flying my supersports 40. calm winds, beautiful weather, plane flying great having about 4 or 5 fligts in when all of a sudden, lost ALL control of the plane..ailerons, throttlle, everything. The the plane just went sporadic, flew about a quarter mile down the field and drilled a tree. The thing is, as this happened, there was a private single engine aircraft flying directly over the field i was at about 1500 to 2,000 feet. Ididnt think about it until i was walking back to my car.. The full scale flying over the field must have interfered with my radio and transmitter. There is no question about it. My JR trans+ reciever is under a year old. My plane wasnt very far from me when this happened, so it def. wasnt out of range, the batteries still had power, and after i gathered up the mess, the electronics worked just fine. I have been flying this plane well over 7 months, and never has something remotely close to this ever happened. I'm sittin here typing this still in a daze??? Has this ever happened to anyone else? or was i just at the wrong place at the wrong time..by the way, my plane hit tree, prob. at full throttle, the fuselage was ok, the wings were splinters...It sorta put an end to the day. Hopefully i can order the wing alone with a decent price.
But, i'm curious to know if this has happened before...let me know
-Jamie

2,000ft [X(]

sorry, let me clarify that. The full scale flying over the field was at 1,500-2,000 ft. I certainly was much lower. More like say 150 ft.

i doubt it was the full scale. at that distance they would have to be putting out LOTS of power on that freq to overload your rx only 150 ft away. our flying site is under the approach to a fairly busy airport with LOTS of student traffic. nothing like that ever happens on flyovers.

Sorry for your loss! However It's part of the game... You will find that the most likely cause will be a battery or switch problem. check for a bad cell/low voltage. Next check the switch and connections. let us know what you find.

When I crashed my Dazzler due to loss of control I thought it
was a "hit" But since, I believe it was a low battery.. I got to
use to 4/6 flights and all being ok, and did not check my battery
before that flight(6th) and already having about 70+ flights on
my system... That was my mistake... all controls worked when
I got the plane back.. Let me tell you.. That will be the last time
a low/unchecked battery will cause that problem:-)

yea, it's not worth losing a plane over a weak battery. If you plan on a long day at the field, you should always bring spare batteries. It's worth the extra little money. However, my plane seemed to lose control exactly when the full scale was passing overhead, which makes me believe it had something to do with my crash. I'm sure it's very uncommon for an airplanes radio equipment to interfere with an rc frequency, but it's still possible. Again, i'm not ruling out the possibility of a weak battery as the cause, but I may never know the reason. i will be more cautious with my next airplane. I think a range test is a must before every or every other flight. i tend to get lazy with things like but it's worth saving the airplane.

I would say more of a battery problem than anything else.......... i normally onlu push 4 flights until i put the battery on quick charge........ 3 flights is a normal for each plane...... sounds from your desciption complete loss of control that its pointing at the battery fault....... ive had interference before but it made me loose partial control i still had some movement but a dead batt would be complete loss.........

Hope you get back in the air soon

Gosh wouldn’t it be great to know when interference was being received. Guessing at the cause of a crash is a pain.

It is not likely to be available any time soon but I would really like to have RX battery voltage on the transmitter screen all the time. The ability to check voltage at a glance would probably eliminate 90% of the battery related crashes at our field.

With all the electronic wizardry today it seems like there should also be ways to detect and report interference without spending a fortune.

It could have been the FS aircraft. The spinning prop could have acted as a "chopper", & interfered with the signal. Normal broadcast (as opposed to microwave) TV signals are disrupted by prop-driven aircraft.

I'd also say the receiver battery was the culprit. I too never exceed 3 or 4 flights without putting the pack on the charger. You may get away with 5 or 6 when the pack is new, but eventually the capacity drops a little, and then.... You hit a tree.
Dennis-

Hi!
Sounds as a battery problem to me. What did your battery checker say? You do use a battery checker onboard your airplane don't you?!
As for batteries... Don't use Nicad batteries, 2300mAh Nickel metall hydrid cells are available at the same weight and size as those old 500-800mAh Nicads.
Regards!
Jan K
Sweden

I put a $10 voltwatch from Tower on everything I build, its cheap insurance, course I crash regularly cause I'm a bad builder/flyer anyway but not from a low battery,,,it did happen once, a friend was doing a maiden for me and it flew about a minute and then he yelled ,"I'm hit" and it went down, well after I found it and we checked that no one was on the same channel, he said man it acted like your battery was low.......Rog

What about your transmitter battery? Are you sure your transmitter was in safe voltage range?

yea my transmitter had some power left. I have a JR radio w/ digital screen. It displayed 9.9 volts after the crash. The manual warns anything below 9.6 volts is unsafe.

I agree with the low rx battery. Especially if it was the 600 mah battery that comes standard with most trainers. I wouldn't go more than three flights without recharging those things. It may have worked great after the crash, at close range, but being 500 or more feet from the tx, it might have been fading.....

I agree with the receiver battery diagnosis. When you tested the radio on the ground there was no load. The radio may have seemed fine even though the battery was low. Spend $10-15 and get a voltwatch.

Many good points and explanations here blaming the reciever battery. I guess it was just coincidence that my crash happened as a real plane passed over.The fact is that my rx battery was low (not extremely low) but low enough to cause some problems. After hearing everyones input, i think its safe to say it was the battery and not he full scale. BTW thanks guys for the replies .......
In the future, i'm going to buy 2 or 3 spare batteries and and swap them every 3-4 flights. It's easy enough to switch batts and certainly affordable.
Jamie

You can change batteries or just get a field charger. Nothing like being able to get 8+ flights on a plane during a long day at the field.

Fwiw, we have regular overflights at our field from all kinds of aircraft, everything from Cessnas to medivac, police and military choppers to airliners in the pattern to BWI airport that look like you can touch them (they are up around 2,000, according to some pilots in the club who are familiar with the approach). The GA aircraft are supposed to say over 1,000ft, but they often are lower, and the medivac and other choppers come over lower than that, sometimes much much lower.

And I've flown at a field in VA near Dullas airport that is right under one of the approach paths, the jets coming over look HUGE, probibly only up about 1000ft there or so.

I've never heard anyone mention anything about a fullscale causing interference to one of our models. Not saying it's not possible, but it seems highly unlikely. The more obvious and more likely probelm was a battery problem. Did you put the battery on a loaded meter after the crash? Just wiggling the sticks isn't enough evidence.

Another question, when you lost contact with the model, did the throttle stay constant, or did you hear the engine chaning RPM all over the place? Unless you are flying PCM or with an RX with failsafe, interference will always show up with ALL channels at once all jumping around. Faster jitters on control surfaces might not show up as erratic flight (though they often do), but every confirmed hit I've seen has had throttle changes that could be heard from the ground. If you didn't get erratic throttle changes, it was a complete radio failure, and that means battery, switch, or something simular.

I would put more time into finding the cause than just looking up and saying "he did it" to the plane flying over head. There is no way possible that the full scale plane caused your crash unless you were watching him instead of flying your plane and just lost control. I would bet your RX pack was weak, and built up enough after it hit the tree and you turned it off to move the controls again. I would check the radio out good and make sure the switch is good, (read that replace the switch, its cheap) and cycle the battery and find out how long you can actually fly. If you had a servo hanging up, it could have dropped the battery enough to kill the power, and then it could build back up in the time you walked it back to the car.

Don't just blame something handy, find the real problem, or you will lose another for the same reason.