Tough day for crashes

[bearcat]

Wow guys, yesterday was a real tough day for the Air Corps. The weather was beautiful, you couldn't ask for a nicer day, with great thermals too. But I counted 6 crashes. And I can't quite figure out why.

Check me on this, but doesn't it seem like there were an abnormally high number of radio interference incidents???
Most of you guys fly on 2.4 gHz, don't you? I wonder if there is something close to that frequency that was throwing a wrench in the gears.

That F-22 and the F-5 should not have crashed, and Mitch is certainly a capable pilot. The yellow sailplane with the tail flutter is another example. Then there was Curtiss' P-51 that corkscrewed in.

Do you think maybe it might not be a bad idea to hang on to your 72 MHz systems? If there's some kind of radio interference up in the higher freq bandwidth, those old radios might work better.

[bearcat]

Mike Tarleton called me this morning and mentioned all the crashes he observed. I told him I wondered if possibly radio interference might have been an issue, because there have never been that many crashes. The one he really noticed though, was the two sailplanes that had the midair collision, and I told him, on very rare occaisions, that could happen. Because if you're not prepared to lose a plane, then you can't really send them up.

In case you're wondering, he has a subdivision about a block away and I'm the Qwest engineer here, so we've been in contact regarding cabling his subdivision for phones. So the discussion on yesterday's flying was a subject he brought up as a side-note.
I wanted to make sure I explained things well, out of concern because I don't want him to maybe shut us down if he thinks we're a safety hazard. He didn't mention anything about that though. He just mentioned noticing there were a lot of crashes.

[Lt Swiss]

I crash about twice a week and I fly about 30 to 40 flights a week. But I believe it is a 'let the chips fall where they may' kind of world so...

"Everything is exactly as it should be, including your desire to improve it." -Lao Tzu

If you want to be a great race car driver you have to burn through a lot of very expensive tires. No difference...

We are not alone...

[bearcat]

I know. I'm not worried about it. I was a little bit surprised Mike called ME about it, since I've been with your flying group for a very short time, but I downplayed it.

Seriously though, what do you think was going on with the radios on Sunday? Might not be a bad idea to bring out the old 72 MHz radios next time, if there's some interference in the 2.4 gig band.

[Lt Swiss]

I think and have noticed that since there is no antenna outside the fuselage with the 2.4s, there must be a enough interference in the thick EPO foam or the carbon reinforcement to choke off the receiver.

And if the transmitter's batteries are even a little low, they are in danger of signal loss. They are digital, so there's likely no chance that something out there was doing it to us.

From Wikipedia:
...many radios can be transmitting at once, without interfering with each other, as the digital systems change frequency approximately every two milliseconds, so even if two transmitters are on the same channel, they are not on for long, so the pilot is not going to notice any abnormal behavior of the model in the 1/500th of a second that they are interfering.

All my receivers are Spektrum AR500 Sport (5 channels). The long 6" antenna is usually run down the fuselage and the short 1" antenna is set 90 degrees perpendicular to the long one.
AR500

But I do have a really good 6 channel one with a remote receiver connected to the main receiver so this can not happen.
AR6200


And they make 'em with lots of remotes to place at different angles so there's no way to lose signal bind.
12 Channel DSM2 PowerSafe Receiver


From Wikipedia:
"...One downside to 2.4GHz is that precautions have to be made in the installation in models because certain materials such as carbon fiber can mask the signal."

A lot of carbon in the F-22 wings... hmmm....

[bearcat]

Makes sense. Maybe it was just far enough out to start causing problems. Are you going to maybe go back to an older frequency on this one?

[Lt Swiss]

I will be putting a better receiver with a remote in the Raptor since it does get far away pretty quickly. That should solve this one. And there is no going back to FM for me unless I'm forced...