The misunderstanding in in the meaning of "fail safe."
Fail safe does not mean no crash, it doesn't mean that everything
will be OK, all it means is that in the event of loss of signal the
system can be programmed to go to a predetermined position.
How safe is the predetermined position?
That depends on the type of model, who did the programing, what
the priorities are and what the flight/field conditions are at
the time of signal loss.
For example, you almost certainly want to program a power model to
go to low throttle on signal loss. There may be exceptions but I
can't think of any right now.
A gasbag floater might want full up, full rudder and full spoilers if
available. This would make the plane spiral in at a fairly low speed
so it would be unlikely to do much damage to anyone or anything other
than itself.
Clean, fast birds are a problem, but the same principles are there,
try to keep (or get) the speed down both to reduce the damage and
also give people more time to react to do things like get out of
the way.
BTW Minimize damage is mainly refering to people and things on the
ground. Saving the plane is the last priority.
In general "fail safe" mean cr*ps out in a predictable fashion.
michael N6CHV AMA 77292
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> In a message dated 7/13/00 12:56:03 PM Central Daylight Time,
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>
> << On the
> other hand, the "fail safe" theory is just that: A theory. No matter where
> you set the servos in fail safe mode, the ship is still gonna go in. >>
>
> Huh? I thought PCM meant just that, Pretty Crash Mode.
> I do think setting the ship up to go into crow or butterlfy mode would be
> helpful, if only to reduce the amount of damage done.
>
> Kristopher
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