In the G4 simulator from Real Flight, I found a way to cause dead stick landings randomly, for practice.

Go to menu option Simulation/Flight Failures/Frequency/Always.
Then, to only allow failures for an engine out, deselect all the other options under Simulation/Flight Failures/Enable, only leaving a checkmark next to 'Kill Engine'
The 'Always' option, according to the manual, says each time you reset for a flight, something is guaranteed to go wrong, usually choosing some inconvenient time.

My question is this.

There are other failures listed which I don't understand, namely Reverse Channel and Channel Swap.

Reverse Channel sounds like the servo is turning the opposite way?? Channel Swap sounds like rudder controls throttle and vise versa for example. Does this actually happen on a radio?

What are these and how would you correct for them?

These failures are not something that you would want to encounter in a real flight (meaning flying a real RC instead of a simulator). They are there to make you do a ground check before flying your plane. As if someone came up before you, like maybe an instructor, and messed with something on your radio. Then, hopefully, you would find it during a pre-flight BEFORE you fly. Obviously, if you fly with the channel reversed, for instance, especially ailerons, you would be in for an interesting surprize.

Actually servos being reversed and channels being mixed up can be quite common with transmitters that have more than one model stored in the memory. If you were flying model 1, get out another plane, which is model 3 and you forget to change your transmitter, all sorts of problems are possible. Some of my planes use 2 channels for one control surface, so you can see the possiblities of a huge screw up. It does happen and do not ask me how I know. Good Luck, Dave

Also if you have 2 aileron servos plugged into two channels of your receiver, and plug them into the wrong slots (right aileron into left slot, etc.) it would fly as if the channels were reversed. Of course you are supposed to do a preflight check, but I imagine we're all guilty of not doing a full preflight at least once in a while. It happened to a very experience pilot with a new plane at my club (last year? I wasn't there, but heard the story.) who was maidening a beauty new plane. He took off and the plane rolled a little to the left as it left the ground, so he gave it some right aileron, and it rolled left even more; he slammed right aileron not understanding what was happening (all happening so fast) and slammed the wingtip into the ground, cartwheeling the plane into a pile of splinters.

Sorry, this won't do anything on ailerons. Both aileron servos move in the same direction. So if you plug them into the "wrong" slot the aileron is still going to have the same movement it would have if it was plugged into the "correct" slot.

Ken

Must have been mistaken. My bad. Maybe he was 'flying the wrong model' and didn't have servos reversed.

That's probably more likely what happened. Had the wrong model selected with the ailerons reveresed. It happens to a lot of modelers..... ONCE. Trust me, after you do it once you'll NEVER do it again for the entire time you fly!!!

Ken

For more realism practicing Dead Stick Landings using sim G4, turn on wind and turbulence!

First, here again is how to set the Kill Engine option:
Go to menu option Simulation/Flight Failures/Frequency/Always.
Then, to only allow failures for an engine out, deselect all the other options under Simulation/Flight Failures/Enable, only leaving a checkmark next to 'Kill Engine'
The 'Always' option, according to the manual, says each time you reset for a flight, something is guaranteed to go wrong, usually choosing some inconvenient time.

Now for the Wind and Turbulence:

Go to Simulation/Settings menu.

Then expand Wind and Weather and single click Global Wind. Set both Variation and Gusts to 40. Set Wind Velocity to whatever you want to simulate - I suggest about 10 - 12 for a trainer.

Then expand Turbulence Systems. Set Turbulent Layer Height to the maximum height you will be flying, say 200 feet for example. Set the other two options at 10.

You'll find this is a good mix - don't set any higher for a trainer or it won't be realistic.

Have a blast!