Page 9 - MFW March 2024

My Failure to Failsafe

A CAUTIONARY TALE

It was a sunny if a little windy morning at the field. I arrived,
said hello to my fellow flyers and assembled my model.
Tested all control surfaces were working in the correct
directions, and performed a full range check with no
issues. I started the engine and flew my first flight of the
day with no issues, and good telemetry data showing no
radio signal issues.

On the second flight flew for a few minutes until the plane
became unresponsive to any inputs; it just kept flying
circling and gently climbing with the throttle at about half. I
lifted the transmitter, moved directions, even ran towards
the plane as far as was possible but all to no avail. It was a
sickening feeling to see a model flying away completely
unresponsive to any pilot inputs.

It continued to climb for what seemed like a minute then
straightened but the throttle did not stop or lower.
Eventually it started to lose altitude and sight was lost
behind trees over the water. The plane was eventually
recovered, completely totalled but most importantly no Prime Persons note
harm came to anyone due to the flyaway. This incident could have been significantly more serious.
We got lucky, that eventually runs out. CHECK YOUR
When I was doing the post-mortem checks to determine FAILSAFE SETTINGS (I know I checked mine)
what had happened, I realised that I had not in fact set the
throttle failsafe to a low idle, rather it was set to hold. Which Chris.
explains why the throttle stayed at half when the radio link
was lost.

So the moral of the story is that you should always be
certain to have your failsafe settings set correctly, and
always test they are working as expected before lifting into
the air especially after setting up a new model. I am usually
very careful with throttle fail safe setting it to idle, but on this
model I missed it. Let my mistake be the experience that
you learn from. Happy landings!

Rhys Jones

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