RC Flying Today
STROKE
Okay, so I had a stroke. It could happen to anyone! The main things I learned from the experience are: 1) I didn't know anything about a stroke (the premier crippler and third-most-important killer of adults), and 2) the people at the flying fields I use are woefully unprepared to deal with an emergency.
My agenda item for your next club meeting is that you should make a serious effort to identify sources of help and post them on a permanent sign at the flying site. It will do no good to list the telephone numbers for police, fire, emergency medical techs, etc., if they are county people and not permitted on the federal reservation that you fly from. Besides, the first question will be, "Where is the telephone?"
You should list the directions to the nearest hospital, but what good will that do if they won't give any service without insurance cards, or whatever? List the requirements, too! In New York, at least, you can't be refused emergency room service for lack of insurance. The point I am making is that you should list organizations that are ready to do something useful.
Another thought is that we should never fly alone. Take along a friend! The friend should be ready to:
- Land the airplane. You wouldn't want to leave an unguided missile wandering around the countryside, would you?
- Drive the car. The friend should be able to take you to whatever help you need. It's bound to be faster than waiting for help to reach you.
- Know where help can be found. This depends on the agenda item above. If you had a stroke, as I did, your life might depend on your friend getting you to the nearest hospital's emergency room.
I have observed that modelers tend to be loners — accustomed to doing everything for themselves. That describes me. We don't like to consider the possibility that something will take control of our life away from us. In the movie Rolling Thunder, the car builder tells the doctor, "If you get a race car driver to visit a funeral home before he is actually dead, you've done something, because those guys don't want to admit that car racing can kill or maim them."
What is a Stroke?
A stroke is a sudden, often severe impairment of the body brought on by disruption of blood flow to the brain. Brain cells die, which doctors call infarction. Fortunately, you have many extra brain cells. It's sometimes possible to teach some of them to take over the jobs of the dead cells.
The three main forms of stroke are:
- Thrombotic: Fatty deposits build up in the arteries, which leads to blood clots. This is known as atherosclerosis and accounts for about 60% of victims. See blood pressure.
- Embolic: A blood clot breaks loose from somewhere else in the body and floats to the brain. About 20% of strokes have this cause.
- Hemorrhagic: Blood vessels leak or develop thin spots that rupture under elevated blood pressure. About 10% of strokes are this.
Here are some things that can minimize your chances of having a stroke:
- Tobacco — Don't.
- Alcohol — Don't (or limit heavily).
- Blood pressure — Get under control (limit intake of salt and fat; minimize stress in life).
- Obesity — Exercise; get some. No known drug or surgery can eliminate the possibility of stroke.
Worse yet, some factors can't be controlled:
- Age — Strokes happen more in people over 65.
- Gender — Males have more strokes than females.
- Race — Blacks have strokes more frequently than whites.
- Diabetes — If you have it, you are at higher risk.
- Family history — Parents who had fatal strokes.
- Personal history — Prior TIAs (Transient Ischemic Attacks) make you a stroke candidate.
TIA symptoms are non-specific, meaning other things can cause the same symptoms:
- Numbness.
- Weakness.
- Paralysis.
Classic stroke effects:
- Sudden blurred or decreased vision.
- Difficulty speaking or understanding.
- Dizziness, nausea, loss of balance, unexplained fall.
- Difficulty swallowing.
- Sudden headache.
TIA symptoms may be recognized only after a big stroke. I was awakened several times with headache and dizziness accompanied by sweating. At the time doctors ascribed it to diabetes. Symptoms vary widely — they may be different for different people. At some point you will need immediate, effective first aid.
This brief information has whetted my appetite. Much of it is abstracted from Stroke: Reducing Risk, published by the National Stroke Association, 300 East Hampden Ave., Suite 240, Englewood, CO 80110-2622. Tel 303-762-9922.
I was fortunate my son Tim was available at the right time. Also fortunate, the damage seems to have been confined to the part of the brain that controls balance. It leaves me disequilibrated and nauseous much of the time. After two months in the hospital, I am recovering rapidly — no paralysis, no loss of dexterity, mental acuity intact.
KEEP IT SIMPLE
Go out to fly — grab airplane, transmitter, fuel, check people's channel, get pin, start motor, fly. Check channel, don't...
How Do You Check for Radio Interference
The simplest way is to look and ask other fliers which RC channels they are using. If there is no conflict, turn the receiver on and see what happens. If control surfaces remain stationary, the receiver isn't seeing interference, so you can turn on your transmitter and check your control responses.
Don't just wiggle the sticks; examine the control responses. Say aloud, "right is right," then move the rudder stick and observe that the right stick actually moves the rudder trailing edge to the right. Right aileron stick should lift the trailing edge of the right aileron. Up elevator stick should lift the trailing edge of the elevator, and so forth.
Most transmitters have reversing switches! Never assume they are in the correct position. Each year we see airplanes destroyed because the ailerons are reversed, and the pilot doesn't discover the fact until the plane is in the air. While you are at it, check the dual-rate switches; occasionally they do get knocked out of position.
Next, pull the rudder, ailerons, elevator, flaps, etc. You may get a nasty surprise! Hinges do pull out or break. Clevises become disconnected, and the screws holding control horns pull out under vibration. The center screw holding the servo arm often does that, particularly from inverted servos, like the aileron servo in the top wing. Look for trouble before it happens!
Next, Check Your Batteries
The transmitter usually has a meter. Where is the needle? Many transmitters include a cable to enable that meter to check the receiver batteries. Do you use it? Give me one good reason why not!
I've seen perfectly good airplanes fly away and crash simply because the transmitter or the receiver batteries were almost totally discharged at takeoff. When they run down in flight, the pilot is left without control. You get the most helpless feeling watching an out-of-control airplane crash. Annoyingly, the batteries will move the servos after the crash. Why? Because the batteries recover a little charge chemically while you are walking over to pick up the pieces.
There are many expanded-scale voltmeters on the market, but you need a matching plug. Permit me to introduce you to CEU, a universal plug made by Custom Electronics, RR1, Box 123B, Higginsville, MO 64037, and available from AC R/C and your local hobby dealer at around $3.50.
Bridge CEU with a 10 ohm 10 watt resistor from + to -. Clip a VOM across the resistor and watch what happens. If the voltage reads more than 4.8 VDC and stays there for 15 seconds, your 4-cell flight battery is OK. The voltage for an 8-cell transmitter battery is 9.6 VDC. In either case, if the voltage diminishes noticeably in the 15-second period, it would be a good idea to charge the batteries before you fly.
Ground Range Check
When you have proven that the controls and battery are okay, do a ground range check! Turn on the transmitter, collapse or remove the transmitter antenna (according to the manual), then walk away from the airplane while pulsing the rudder control and counting your steps. You should be more than 100 steps away from the plane before you lose control of the rudder. Scratch the correct number of steps into the case when the system is new. Any change in ground range afterward is a warning to perform further checks: there might be RF interference.
So far, you haven't needed anything more than you brought.
Additional Support Equipment
If you only buy one tool, let it be a tachometer. A tachometer is to a power plant as a thermometer is to your head. Use it when the power plant acts sick. A tachometer does its reading off the propeller by counting the shadows. Because it counts shadows, you should be aware of the ways the tachometer can lie when it sees the wrong shadows.
Get in the habit of checking RPM before each flight! A tachometer won't fix anything, but it tells you when there has been a change. Examples:
- Glow-engine airplane: The engine wouldn't idle slow enough for a good pavement landing. I squirted WD-40 around the carburetor. When the oil plugged the air leak through the mounting screw, the RPM changed. I found the leak and fixed it. Problem and solution shown by the tachometer.
- Electric airplane: Normal full throttle on freshly charged batteries was 5400 RPM; I couldn't get over 4800 RPM. After dismantling the gearbox, I found that the setscrew on the pinion gear was slipping. After the screw was tightened and locked in place, I had my 5400 RPM back.
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
