RC Airplane World Forum

what do you do when your plane goes out of range would it slow down and fall or just fly
p.s im a beginner

A good way to check what would happen to your plane's control surfaces if it were to go out of range is to simply sit it on the ground and turn on the receiver without turning on the transmitter.

Do the control surfaces twitch? Can you hear the servos moving around a little? That's what would happen if it were flying and got out of range of the transmitter. The receiver would pick up any stray signal and the servos would twitch and kick, probably causing the plane to crash fairly quickly.

Throttle is a different question. If I were flying a glow engine plane and it went out of range, would the throttle remain at the same setting? Probably pretty close, but again the receiver would not be bonded with my transmitter and would be picking up stray signals which could move the throttle setting.

All of that being said, today's transmitter/receiver sets have a huge range. You would probably lose sight of your plane before it ever got out of range. As a fun little test, when I got my Futaba 6EX I took my plane to my nephew's house who lives two miles from my house, then I went home and while talking on the phone with him I was able to control the plane as it sat on his living room floor.

Of course with the quality of some lower priced equipment it is always the BEST idea to perform a range check prior to flying. Be aware of what can happen. I am used to my 6EX which has a short little antenna, but two weeks ago I went out to fly with one of my older transmitters. The plane took off and flew fine, but then started acting funny. I managed to turn it around and it worked better, but as soon as it got about 150 yards away from me it would jerk and twitch. I had forgotten to extend the antenna! My nephew came over and pulled it out for me and everything was fine.

Wow, that little "2 mile test" is impressive Jeff! Even more so given that it was done at ground level, amazing.

Tigerbomb, always do a range test before you fly, this is so important. Even the best quality radio gear will not be able to control your plane if the transmitter batteries are low or bad quality, or there is a fault or loose connection somewhere. You can read about the range check at
http://www.rc-airplane-world.com/rc-air ... hecks.html

Having your model fly out of range isn´t any fun at all - it´ll either just keep fllying over the horizon, or it´ll crash. Either way you´ll lose it.