Morgans wrote:

Most likely, nothing bad would happen. Is that something you want to
gamble your like on? Is it worth it?


I'm guessing that you either live east of the Mississippi or on/near the
west coast, and not in Oklahoma. RC airplanes can and have killed
people. However, generally this happens from a much larger plane than I
plan on using, and the chances of someone getting injured is reduced
significantly when the engine isn't running. With this in mind these
are the situations I foresee potential for serious injury. The only way
I see this coming in contact with someone on the ground is if the engine
is not running. Therefore, the biggest danger to someone or something
on the ground is gone. So for the plane to impact a person while the
engine was running it would have to be an impact with a real plane. If
the difference in heading of the real plane and the model were between
greater than 0 and less than 90, then the prop wold be history before it
penetrated the cabin and would the now dead engine would loose most of
it's energy before in impacted someone in the plane, most of the rest of
the plane would never enter the cabin. If the difference between the
heading of the real plane and the model were between 90 and 180, that's
big a problem. I'm not sure how feasible it would be to have some kind
of sensor to detect such an impending collision and do something about
it. Other than avoiding busy airspace, I'm not sure what to do about
it. Keep in mind that the class C around KOKC which is with in 3 miles
of my house and I plan on staying away from, really isn't very busy at
all. There is still the possibility that something goes wrong with the
autopilot and sends the plane down the wrong side of the highway at 3
feet off the ground. To virtually eliminate this type of situation, I
plan on having a completely independent system that will kill the engine
and put the plane in a slow flight configuration should the altitude
drop below a given amount. Granted that could also fail but the chances
of both the autopilot and that system failing is very remote, that "fail
safe" system would be pretty small and light and could be made redundant
and possibly include a the deployment of a parachute. All this said I
am open to other ideas to make it safer.

--
Chris W
KE5GIX

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