I'm prompted to write this after another unfortunate accident, last week, which left an experienced modeller with some nasty injuries and needing significant surgery.
A reminder, first, to everyone, that aircraft with electric motors should not be armed before you have got them to the pits or at the flight line, and they should be disarmed, after flight, before they are carried back beyond the pits. Importantly, nobody in the sheds or spectator area should be at risk from aircraft that are being armed in their near vicinity. This is pretty straightforward stuff, and has been reinforced several times on the web site and at club meetings, but is still ignored far too frequently.
Here are a few other suggestions for improving safety and reducing the probability of injury with electrics:
- Please consider using the throttle-hold feature on your radio (almost all radios at the field have this function). It enables you to disable the throttle stick at the click of a switch, it is easy to program, and simple to apply. When correctly activated, the throttle is held at idle setting (which should mean that electric motors are still, not spinning slowly)
- Consider using an external plug to close the circuit and make your aircraft live (eg if you take the positive cable from speed controller to LiPo, cut it (without the LiPo attached), solder the two ends to the two lugs on a female deans plug and fix that to the outside of the fuselage where it is safely accessible, you can solder a "loop" onto a male deans plug and push that in to complete the ciurcuit after the batteries are installed and before you are ready to fly)
- Electrics are predictable, but a momentary loss of concentration can have them leaping into life quicker than any internal combustion engine. Electrics should be safely and reliably restrained, by a helper or a similar system to that used for IC engines
- If you do need to work on an electric powered plane in the sheds, and sometimes there isn't a better option, please remove the propellor before arming it. That way you are dealing with a blunt drill at worst, rather than a self-propelled circular saw, and please make sure that those around you know what you are doing
