By Steve Neu
I have seen a number of cases of our club members handling and standing in very close proximity to their planes that have their propulsion systems armed and radios on. In some cases people are standing in front of the plane turning or handling the prop. The electric motors can develop full torque at zero RPM and accelerate to full RPM in a few 10ths of seconds. Getting tangled in a prop can easily lead to an ER visit of worse. Here are some simple suggestions:
1) Do not plug the propulsion battery to the motor controller until you are ready to fly.
2) Do not work on the prop, spinner with the battery plugged into the motor controller.
3) Do not depend on “safe or arming” switches on the controller OR the transmitter —if you need to work on something unplug the power connector.
4) If you need to test run your motor at the field do it well away from others —point the plane away from people make sure people are out of the arc of the prop is if it fails—yes it happens!
Don’t put your safety at risk by depending on a micron of silicon or a few lines of computer code to keep you safe—stay away from the blades of your prop when it is armed!
