Army's Remote Control Aircraft Crashes, Wreckage Recovered.

[MohammedA]

ARMY'S REMOTE CONTROL AIRCRAFT CRASHES, WRECKAGE RECOVERED.


Text of report by Pakistani newspaper Jang on 23 November

Gujrat: The Pakistan army's Air Defence Regiment in Buzurgwal launched a remote controlled [RAV] aircraft, which lost control and went out of range crashing some distance away. Residents of nearby villages scurried around the wreckage of the aircraft. Later, the police intervened and helped Pakistan army recover the wreckage.

Source: Jang, Rawalpindi, in Urdu 23 Nov 01 p 3.
BBC Worldwide Monitoring/ (c) BBC 2001.

[Rafi]

What do they mean by "remote controlled" do they mean an aircraft or CUAV this is fascinating if accurate. :)

[Boota Masih]

No reason to get excited - most probably remote controlled aeromodels used by air defence units to train its antiaircraft gunners. I have have seen them. Very basic fibre glass design with a 3 channel remote control i.e. rudder, elevator and throttle. No landing gears. Design is not very stable. Army has now asked for upgraded replacements. Navy uses a better version called the Banshee, originally from the US now being made in Kamra

For live MANPAD training the target is a phosporous shell fired from a cannon, as propeller driven target drones cannot replicate the performance of fast jets.

[Awaisi]

Boota saheb,

Just going back to the "going out of range theory". To my knowledge, in radio control (RC) aeromodels, the rudder of the model is so set that in the event of loss of radio signal, the servo motor will turn it to one side and the aircraft would most probably return back into the RC range, unless the strong wind wont let it do so. Would not that be the caswe with PA RC aircrafts ?

Awaisi

[Boota Masih]

Awaisi Saheb,

It depends on what direction the plane is flying when the servos lock and they don't always lock and even if they circle and come back, landing is an issue. There could be many different reasons for loosing control. I have lost two planes because of going out of range. One due to strong winds and other trying to get out of the way of a real helicopter, which suddenly appeared on the field I was using. Both were ultimately recovered, but obviously in pretty bad shapes. I had a friend whose model flew into the blue yonder never to be seen again.