Zero Gone – frequency conflicts can be gone

A friend lost a beautiful multi thousand dollar zero last weekend. The crash was probably due to a radio turn on. A visitor was at the flight field to show a for sale airplane to one of the club members. The crash analysis coupled with the in air characteristics point towards a frequency conflict. Thirty years of observation leads me to believe that frequency conflicts are the second in the cause of total loss crashes. Batteries are number one. However a club member is attempting to prove that stupidity should be number one.

I strongly believe that technology has existed for some time to put frequency conflicts to rest forever. Spread spectrum is one approach. Check summing the received packet is another. Packet checking based on the serial number of the transmitter is another. My office purchased spread spectrum phones for less than $100 each about five years ago. A few years ago I purchased spread spectrum phones for the home for about $60 each.

What can we do to convince the radio manufacturers to accommodate the most important problem? They already know that we will spend money to protect our multi thousand-dollar airplanes? Frequency conflicts can and need to be a thing of the past.

What does it take to convince the manufacturers? Warbirds are expensive to build and maintain.

Sorry to hear about your friends plane, but common sense (i.e. the lack there of by the visitor) always says to check the frequency board before turning on any trasmitter or receiver. Plus it's an AMA rule isn't it?

The visitor was believed to be carrying a wide band transmitter, not AMA, and not active in the hobby since the time of narrowband.

I've been flying RC since '85 and I'm pretty sure that I have been "shot down" three times. In all three cases, I had the frequency pin and in two of them, the other modelers were very experienced RCers.
I hope we see better radio systems, such as those mentioned by BillS, soon!

I requested of Danny at JR to pass along my request to management. We shouldn’t need to be concerned about anyone‘s frequency. The technology is available for everyone to fly on the same frequency at the same time and not create a conflict. We shouldn’t have to be concerned about a visitor who hasn’t flown in ten years understanding today’s rules. A $2000 aircraft shouldn’t depend on a stranger understanding of rules. Phil Kraft one of the original digital radio control pioneers would have been the first explore today’s technology to solve age-old problems.

Thanks for your concern and condolence.

Lets get on the manufacturers to address the basic problem. The pin box is a ridiculous control methodology.

Right on, if enough people make some noise, the manufactures will listen. Remember, they exist to make money, not to contribute to the hobby.

Mike

I think there is a bigger problem looming in the dark .There called park flyers . On one hand there great to get newbees into the hobby on the other you have a ton of people turning on radios in there neiborhood, school yards , and any open field .

Some rc fields are not that far from developments , park and school fields . In-tern its a disaster waiting to happen . I wish hobby shopes especially "Hobby Town" would simply give there consumers a few pointers about looking for local clubs and flying sites . It would be a great way of newbees knowing where fields are and how frequencies effect other planes in the air . Its not about the freedom to fly its about a plane possibly hurting someone becuase the pliot lost control .
A simple solution is to publish local field locations at your hobby shop, flying hours of the club and a good list of safty tips . If we dont start to takes these steps we are one accident away from loseing our freedom to fly .

Maybe they should assign freqs in those park flyers which are the same as the cars? Would save them from a whole new band

Thats a great Idea about Hobby shops giving pointers to newbees on clubs.
But I think that we have to do alot ourselves. I've seen newbees go to parks and fly there planes for the 1st time, some make it, and some don't, but thats a great opportunity to introduce ourselves to them, and politely talk to them and encourage them about clubs. Maybe, give them some instructional help. Alot of newbees are afraid of clubs,'cause they don't know anyone, and are afraid of crashing in front of everyone, so they find some park to fly.
I've been working with RF for most of my life, and I still haven't figured it all out yet. It can skip all over the place, and cause havac. It can mix with two freq's and cause an intermod disaster.
And with this hobby growing, and more radios out there, it can be more than a handfull.

I think the idea of using a code that is unique to a transmitter to process only certain received packets is a great idea, although I wonder what the processing burden would be on a receiver receiving and rejecting lots of packets from other transmitters? Perhaps the different frequencies would still be used, so that there wouldn't be that many transmitters on the same frequency at the same time? It looks like there is a solution there somewhere.

I recently bought an RTF park flyer for my 12 year old daughter, who I am proud to say has now soloed, and I am pretty sure it does not operate in the 72 Mhz band. Of course that doesn't prevent someone from buying a 72 MHz band radio separately and using it, but at least some of the park flyer setups that come with a radio should not cause us problems.

Travis

Frequency conflict is a solvable problem.

Clock rates and chips are extremely fast today. Eight years ago you could often tell when the satellite was having trouble with the packet checksum because of the delay or apparent echo. I have not heard the telephone delay in years. Eight years ago our computers were running at 66 MHz and today some of out equipment is running at 2 GHz. A good hardware designer can do a lot with 30 times the horsepower. So can a good programmer.

The computer you are using would not begin to function if file reading/writing was not check summed. No network would function if packet interference and checking didn’t exist. Phones would not work if the packet to the satellite were not checked at the receiving satellite.

The pin box is a kluge, antiquated and ridiculous considering today’s technology. Old timers with the ‘I forgot syndrome’, park flyers, newbees, birthday present kids, and a few dumb sht’s along with many others are dangerous to airplanes. The airplane doesn’t discriminate.

At Joe Noll this year there were many, many ten thousand dollar airplanes. Consider for a moment a heavily attended contest or fly in that didn’t need a pin box or frequency control. Anyone could turn on at any time. It’s technically possible.

The insurance costs to AMA would surely be reduced. Now whether the savings would be passed along to us is a different story.

How do we collectively insist that the manufacturers use the technology to promote safer flying? Everyone has lost airplanes due to a turn on. Ten times that many have had damage for unknown reasons and many probably were some obscure but little known radio interference.

I have probably said too much. Thanks.

Considering the basic computer technologies in practice today it is certainly possible - it would be very expensive in the beginning but eventually the technology would trickle down to the mid level radios at reasonable prices. Unfortunately even if YOU had one of these radios until EVERYONE had one you would still need to use the pin board for the sake of those who didn't have one. Those who didn't have one would be subject to your interference though you would not be subject the theirs.

Nice for you none the less.

well in my flying club, if something like this happens, the person who idiotically turned on the radio must pay:
-1 Full purchase price of the kit and materials used to purchase
-2 If its a kit, you must also pay 25% of the purcahse price for labor time used
-3 THe crashed plane is property of the person that crashed the plane.

most park flyers are in 27 mhz so how is that going to effect the rest of the crowd that typically use the 72 mhz band?

ouch very sorry to hear that.

As for the idea of getting manufacturers to change the RF side of things to stop possible problems and to use such things as freq hopping, spread spectrum etc etc there are a couple of problems.

Manufactuers build equip on a world wide basis and yes they do build different RF band for various countries ie US uses 72Mhz, UK is 35Mhz while we use 36Mhz. Now that is not a real drama for them but the problem lays in the various countries laws and requirements that govern the use of the RF spectrrum and to what use the various bands within the spectrum can be used for.

For example in Australia the part of the 36Mhz band we use is purely for the use of R/C planes, boats and cars. Now various channels are for aircraft use only but nothing stopping a person using ny ch the want really.
Now we have the SMA o r spectrum managment agency who are a Federal Gov dept who oversea the allocation of bands. We are allowed to use our band for discreet channels with no RF synthesisers allowed. Spread spectrum and packet services are allocated to an entirely different band so we can not use that technology. This is probably true for most countries.

Hence manufactuiers will be reticent to design, test and distribute and totally new system for say one country only even a huge market like the US would make the business case look marginal in terms of economy of scale.

anyway that my 2 bobs worth

cheers
Peter

subMikester you are correct but any change will only affect those who purchase first. Those who purchase first generally purchase higher end radios and are usually the ones who have multi thousand dollar airplanes. Yes it sure will take a while for the technology to be accepted by everyone.

But at least you would have a choice. Loosing a few high dollar airplanes is powerful incentive to search for better and higher levels of security.

Protection against turn on is totally outside of your control. It is in the hands of those with the least knowledge. Turn on security should be your choice.

Frank Noll I hope you are lurking somewhere here. An opportunity exists and you should seize the moment.

Alkaline it took several days to reverse engineer the crash damage and come to some reasonable conclusions. No one has ever seen the non-club member before or since. In any event absolute verifiable proof will never exist.

Notification of hits to our receiver system is another weak area.

Peter OZ

Yours is a great country but probably not a large market. Marketers have always designed and built for the largest markets. The size of the population along with other demographics such as age, income and discretionary spending all play a role in marketing decisions. Manufacturers have always tailored their products for specific markets and unfortunately some markets with adverse rules get left out. No one solution applies across the world.

Fortunately there are literally hundreds of methods to partially solve channel conflict. Only a few were mentioned. Some techniques could literally be executed with almost no cost to the manufacturer.

Manufacturers are complacent. As long as we collectively accept the party line that the stupid pin box is necessary no changes will occur. However the Japanese manufacturers especially are extremely sensitive to market share loss. If someone nips them a few market share points they will be up in arms immediately. There will always be 50 engineers that tell you why something cannot be done and one who will concede that yes maybe we could accomplish that.

I have Parkflyers on 72mhz, and seen others on 72mhz. But, common sense and respect for others tells me that I need to fly at a flyin club, and adhere to the rules of the AMA and club.