Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Lessons Learned in RC Flying

All of a sudden I am getting a rash of non-member views. I am clueless as to what is going on and I hope this doesn’t sound flip but my blog is a journal and I’m not particularly interested in who is and who isn’t reading it.

Right now I’m focused on my RC model airplane hobby and I’d be amazed if anyone really cared what I was up to regarding my “Ups and Downs.” Yesterday I flew at the club half a dozen times and brought my airplane home in one piece. I did however get scolded by the club president, and then lectured when I hit another member with my airplane. The lecture was for not flying in accordance with the flight protocol of orbiting in a clockwise fashion when there are others up in the pattern.

As I newbie I’m faced with a continuing barrage of new knowledge and the acquiring and refinement of my skills. For example when I hit Ron I was on the ground and turned off the transmitter. To my dismay, instead of shutting down the engine ran up unexpectedly. My friend Jon explained what happened and Ron was not too upset with me. There were three lessons learned in this incident and I’ll write them down while the embarrassment is still fresh in my mind.

Shutdown sequence: When shutting down an aircraft the engine needs to be stopped. My engine usually stops on its own volition on landing when the prop hits the grass. If it is still running when I taxi over, I pinch the fuel line or squeeze the spinner. Once the engine stops the power switch is turned off and then the plane is deemed inoperable and safe.

Power shut off switch. I had gotten into a bad habit of connecting my power source battery pack directly into the receiver power source. This bypassed the switch which is a bit confusing to understand but not overwhelmingly so. An RC airplane power switch is like a light switch in a house. It commonly has three wires. The first wire connects to the batter pack that runs the receiver. The second wire allows for recharging when the batter is still in the airplane. The third wire connects to the receiver. How hard is that to understand? DUH!

Finally in binding the transmitter to the receiver the last thing in the process is retarding the throttle to fully close. This insures that when the transmitter is turned off, the throttle automatically goes to the shut mode.