Giant Scale Safety.

[SleepyC]

Over the last few years, I have seen many threads pop up regarding safety practices and giant scale airplanes. Many people take for granted that we are essentially handling 50 - 200cc saw blades on a daily basis. Many of us keep safety in mind, and follow strict procedures to ensure all of our digits are still attached to our hands each and every flying day. And yet we still hear the horror stories and see the "I can't believe this happened to me" threads. I have even seen seasoned pro's get lazy and cause major injury to themselves.

These injuries are rare, and can be avoided completely if we as a community help educate each other about proper safety practices. So, I am calling upon you FG. What are the procedures you follow to keep yourself and others safe during the starting, flying and landing of your giant scale planes?

My intension is to compile the good safety procedures and make them into a permanent safety page here on the Giants!

Lets her your thoughts!

[brycesteenburg]

.

[SleepyC]

See.. spell check changed that one for me.
I swear, sometimes spell check hurts me worse than it helps!

[brycesteenburg]

.

[berthoud]

I'll start:

#1 Always Always Always know where your neck strap is.

Seems obvious enough but I can't tell you how many times I've seen someone with their strap hanging dangerously close to a prop's path.

Scott

[gapple12]

Never trust a plane holder and never fly alone.

[classclown]

I deal with it as if it were a firearm. We should not need to hang all kinds of reminders all over the place. One thing that I do, do, I watch everyone at the field like a hawk as much as possible. One, to make myself aware of who is clueless, careless, and dangerous: The CCD's. And two, to try to let them be aware of what they are doing wrong, if I know that they are new to the hobby. For the ones that know better, but do stupid things anyway, I give my friends a big heads up, and just watch them like a hawk, when they're about to fire up and fly.

[danielph]

This is a great thread! Thanks for starting it Sleepy. Other than the normal procedures and those that have been mentioned already, one of the things that I always do when starting my engines is always expecting the engine to start with each flip. You never know when it will fire. I see people all the time (including big name pilots) flipping the props so fast, and they don't even stop their hand until it's running. I always hesitate until the prop stops to put my hand out and flip it again. I'm sure that many of you do this, but it's just one thing that is always of utmost importance to me.

[ScottZ]

Use a bullet proof plane holdown device, always wear a leather glove with reinforcements added to both sides(all motors kick back when flooded),and failsafe idle down when signal is lost AND an ignition cutoff when there is still signal but throttle servo fails full on, motor comes loose ,etc. R Cat digital switches have been very reliable for me so far.Always start motors at idle and try to stay behind the prop when you are able to. Out of all these safety ideas the most violated is the macho bare hand start and many of the top pilots are setting a bad example by still doing this. I was the first at my club to wear a plastic wrapped thick leather glove that can take a full prop breaking hit from a 150cc motor with no damage to my hand at all. The other flyers started to wear this "ugly" glove only after a bad hit from the prop.

[wingwall]

Sorry, I cannot go along with the "never fly alone" thing. Just be extra cautious when you do. Most of us drive a vehicle alone and that's probably one of the most dangerous pieces of equipment we use.

What do you mean by "holder", mechanical or the person type?

[mbacosa]

All of the above reminders are imperative in the safety process. I thought I would toss one out that I feel is overlooked many times. Check prop bolt torque on a regular basis. I can't even count anymore how many prop bolts I've seen sheer or break when flying. If that were to happen on run up there could be serious injury or even death. Scary sh*# right there!!

[danielph]

Yes. :-o

[Airworks]

NEVER TAXI AIRCRAFT TOWARDS YOURSELF OR OTHERS!!!!!!!! lololol , thats just something i watched go bad last week, person thought was running out of fuel so landed , turned, and hit the kill switch and it went throttle open , come to findout the throttle servo was melting, hence no throttle responce in the air creating the thought of fuel running out.
almost was more disasterous then the damage that the plane took itself.lucky noone got hurt, and the other aircraft around it didnt either.

and yeh , it is like , "everyone standing in a tight group , toss a chiansaw up in the air , everyone run", before you know it , kids will be doin this and posting on utube.

[rcpilot82]

ALWAYS make sure if you have someone holding you plane, that they actually have a good hold on the plane. I had a guy ask me to hold his plane for him and before I could even get a hold of it he flipped the prop, it fired and it tried to eat him. Luckily I was able to grab it before it ingested him. He didn't even look to see if I had a hold of the plane before he flipped the prop. that scared the crap out of me, I ask whoever is holding my plane "you got a hold of it?" before every start.

[gareth.ky]

Give the prop a tug to pull the airplane towards you before you start flipping. You don't want the thing rolling forward into you when it lights up.

Do a failsafe engine shutdown test. Get the motor running and with the airplane secured shut off the transmitter. Make sure the motor dies. Check this any time you re-bind the Rx, change servos or linkages.