[martin18152]

I had a plane go into PCM lock out at the field, unfortunately the throttle failsafe was set above idle, and the plane would not stop, so I had to push it over into the ground, brought it back to the pits, and checked it, and everything was fine, I don’t fly things until I identify the problem, so I took it back to the shop, and started moving the surfaces, after about 1 min, the rudder went to the left, and locked, you couldn’t move with your hand, then the ailerons dropped in another few seconds latter, then the rudder came lose. I let everything sit for about 30 seconds on power, and all the surfaces came back up and work for about a min, then everything did the same failure. The problem was an overheated regulator. When power drops to the transmitter, strange things happen, Fail safe may work, or not up to the point all power is lost. The turbo regulator has a fan that cools the heat sink, it is possible the FOD may have got into the fan and jammed it, therefore allowing the regulator to overheat during flight loads, then after the wreck, the FOD disloged, or the regulator cooled down, and everything seemed fine. Check the fan, it may have failed, and the regulator may not have overheated until you stressed it during flight, they don’t put those fans on the regulator for, nothing. I acctualy had a lose wire hitting my fan, so I secured it, and when I start up the plane, I always check the to see if the fan is running. Note: the regulator that failed was not a turbo regulator, it was on a 33% that I bought, and the guy had the whole system on one regulator and two batteries. Since then, I have replace the single regulator with two FROMCO failsafe regulator and switches.