On Mon, May 23, 2005 at 09:51:05AM -0400, John Derstine wrote: | In today's world of synth radios and exchangeable TX modules, this | practice is not reliable either.
Of course, these things have been around for 10+ years. And people have been changing crystals for even longer, probably ever since the first radios came out that didn't take up the _entire_ 27 mHz band for your 1 channel plane ... This practice was _never_ reliable, though I'll agree that it's even less reliable now than it was a few years ago. Still, it's common courtesy, and unless you fly by yourself on your own property exclusively, you really should display your channel on your radio. If you regularly change channels, just make up a few different frequency flags (and remember to change them!) and if you tend to pick random channels thanks to having a synthesized transmitter and receiver, just make a flag that you can write on with dry erase marker ... | The only certain way to determine what channel someone is on is | to scan the frequencies. People forget to put their pin on the | board when they change modules, like wise it is easy to forget to | change your flag. There is no substitute for good frequency | control at any gathering via an impound and scanners. The scanners really are optional if the rest is done right. But they're nice to have. Spread spectrum, take us away! :) My question though is this -- How much of a cut is Gordy getting for each Hobbico scanner that's sold? With as much as he pushes them, you'd think it was pretty substantial ... (Mine should arrive wednesday. I already have a scanner that works well enough, but this should be a lot more convenient to use.) One thing to keep in mind is that these things are really only going to be reliable (with a decent antenna that is) at detecting other R/C pilots, and not at detecting other sorts of interference. Our receivers are vulnerable to interference on their specific frequency, of course, but they're also vulnerable to noise on some other frequencies as well, with the specific frequencies and the strengths of the signals needed to interfere depending on the specific design of the receiver in question. (The receiver in the scanner will also work like this, so if the design is similar to your specific receiver, it'll probably pick up other noises that may interfere. But if the design is different, it may not ...) So just because the light doesn't light up, that doesn't mean that there's not something that could interfere. Still, at $55 + $8 for the antenna (sounds like it's an essential option, if you could actually buy it!) it's cheap insurance against the biggest danger -- other flyers. -- Doug McLaren, [EMAIL PROTECTED] It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid. --George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off. Email sent from web based email such as Hotmail and AOL are generally NOT in text format
