I want to thank everyone for their help and advice with our situation. Doug, we are in California to answer your question.
I've seen many, many instances where the famous "I'm being hit!" gets interpreted as interference when in fact it has nothing to do with another signal, but has to do with something in the plane or transmitter. Tops on the long list include an unseen break in the receiver antennae (usually at the solder joint on the circuit board), an unseated crystal, poor solder joint on a battery lead, switch problems, unscrewed transmitter antennae, a transmitter left on in the pits, and the (in)famous dumb thumbs exacerbated by turbulent conditions. I wasn't at the field during the latest episode, but I was there when the first plane went in. We have an ICOM IC-R2 hand held scanner. The transmitter was shut off but there was still a strong signal on channel 16. We don't have any type of directional Yagi antennae to locate the source. I did drive around the site and didn't see anyone else flying. As I mentioned, we are near an industrial complex that has some companies using robotics; perhaps this could have been the case although it was Sunday morning and the chances of them working at the time are less than average. There is a church nearby that uses a wireless microphone set up. There is also a chain link fence around the field and the pilot was standing near the fence. These factors MAY have contributed to the loss; at this point we are just trying to be "radio forensics" to figure out where the signal came from and if it caused the plane to go in. My original post was just a wish list item. Using PCM will allow a fail safe mode, but sometimes fail safe isn't so safe! For instance, if you're in a spiraling dive and you go into fail safe with flaps out, and all other surfaces level, you'll still crash, maybe just not as hard. Second wish list item: Parachute deployment? I understand that spread spectrum is still a ways off. It seems that there should be a way as Jim B. suggests that each one of us could have a "digital signature", that the first signal the receiver hears is the only signal it hears and all other interference is shut out. I saw it demonstrated with a Berg receiver and it looked very promising. The new Shadow 3 sounds good as well. JE -- Erickson Architects John R. Erickson, AIA > From: Doug McLaren <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2005 21:08:14 -0600 > To: John Erickson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Cc: Soaring List <Soaring@airage.com> > Subject: Re: [RCSE] Signal strength switch? > > On Thu, Mar 31, 2005 at 11:29:07AM -0800, John Erickson wrote: > > | We've has a couple of club members lose planes recently from > | interference. > > Personally, I've seen interference blamed for a lot of user errors > too. Not that this is the case in your situation, but ... > RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off. Email sent from web based email such as Hotmail and AOL are generally NOT in text format
