Focus on Competition
This has been a fun month (October); I’ve been fortunate to get to play with some new technology for the past few weeks. If you are a reader of the AMA web site, you probably know what I’m referring to. The first mass-market system using spread-spectrum technology has hit the streets, and I’m happy to say I was one of the first to get to play with it! This new technology sure makes life easy. Okay, the technology is not new; it actually dates back to World War II, but it is new to our hobby/sport.
In early November I attended the JR Indoor Electric Festival in Columbus, Ohio. There were many aircraft in the air all the time. When I finally got up the nerve to fly, I found it an odd feeling to simply turn on the transmitter without having made a trip to the frequency control table to pick up a frequency-control pin.
That’s right; I simply flipped the transmitter switch to the on position with no regard for frequency control!
The system worked perfectly, and I did not shoot anyone down. In fact, at one point most of the spread-spectrum systems in the building did a sort of mass launch. Roughly 14 of the systems took to the air at the same time without so much as a thought of worrying about what channel they were on.
This first system is designed for park-flyer–type aircraft. The range on this system on its worst day is roughly 1,500 feet. This is the reason for limiting the type/size of aircraft you would fly with it.
Look for much more information in Model Aviation and on the AMA web site on this topic in the coming months.
Different Topic: 27 MHz
While this band is primarily used for surface operations, there are many park-flyer–type RTF aircraft in this band as well. We are seeing a fair amount of abuse of this band right now. Probably 99.9% of this abuse is taking place by surface users; however, it could affect us all if the FCC decides to make an issue of it.
A few things are happening, and one of the most common seems to be users obtaining crystals that are not on channels authorized for radio-control use. In some cases they are obtaining crystals that are not even authorized for CB use. This practice must stop!
I’ll be asking the AMA Frequency Committee for recommendations on this issue. If you know of someone who abuses this band, please do your best to make him or her see the light. This practice is not only a violation of the AMA Safety Code, but it also violates the Code of Federal Regulations.
A few months ago I brought up the subject of fail-safe settings in transmitters. If you fly with a PCM transmitter, it has the ability to set fail-safe settings. For that matter, your transmitter has fail-safe ability if you are flying spread spectrum. Fail-safe is a wonderful tool; however, it must be set up properly to work properly. Most transmitters come preprogrammed from the manufacturer with settings wherein, if the receiver loses the signal from its transmitter, the receiver will hold the servos in the last position the transmitter put them in. Sometimes this works; sometimes it does not. It is important to put some thought into what fail-safe settings work best for your aircraft. In all cases I feel that idle throttle or cut throttle is appropriate.
In my thinking, you want your fail-safe settings to put the aircraft in the safest possible attitude, minimizing potential damage to people and property. So give this setting some thought!
Most important, set the fail-safe settings up! Read the manual that came with your transmitter; almost all of them are very well written, yet it seems that most of us do not read it. I think our transmitters have become so easy to operate that many of us don’t read the manual because it’s almost a challenge to see if we can do the programming without it. However, you are missing important information that could save your life or the life of someone else. Please read the manual, understand it, and set your fail-safe settings every time. Be sure you know how performing certain operations with your transmitter affects fail-safe settings.
We are now into year two of the rules-change cycle. By the time you read this, the results of the initial vote will be posted on the AMA web site. This will tell us which proposals will go forward to the final vote and possibly become new rules. To stay informed about this process, please visit www.modelaircraft.org/Comp/proposals.htm.
Till next time... MA
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
