No insurance ... how on earth does anyone organise an event with the general public in as spectators without any insurance ??? Not that I'm one for suing or anything but surely there must be public liability cover ?

But for frequencies, 27meg is permitted in Aust., but there is a good chance of interference (which is why few people use it). 40meg is also allowed but few importers/wholesalers bother to bring it into the country for some reason (probably because there are approx. 40 channels usuable across 27 and 29meg). Just check with your local hobby shop for what 4+ channel radio gear (usually for aero's) can use 29meg crystals, there are some out there - I use a radio set that can swap modules to allow 27, 29 or 40meg from the one Tx unit.

I'm not trying to anger anyone, it's just that you may be surprised how many people in Aust that have some kind of RC hobby don't know how serious life can get if you get caught on an illegal frequency - just passing on some friendly advice.
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No insurance ... how on earth does anyone organise an event with the general public in as spectators without any insurance ??? Not that I'm one for suing or anything but surely there must be public liability cover ?

the only public event - robowars has insurance.

no other events are public.
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Just to reassure people... (who arent already aware that we discussed this issue on the old forum a while back).

I asked *two* MAAA (Model Aircraft Association Australia) approved Radio repair techies about this and both of them said *off the record* not to worry about it.

Yes, the fines in the regulations are huge, but thats because the government hates the idea of people transmitting *any* sort of radio energy without approval from the beaureaucrats. In practice, neither of them knew of any cases where people had been prosecuted for running their model radio on an incorrect frequency.

The flying clubs and other model associations will of course advise you to follow the rules (how could they do otherwise ?), and for that matter, I'm not advising you to do otherwise either (this being a public forum and all). Your actions are always your own responsibility IMO.

However, (according to these anonymous techs), given that we tend to operate our machines inside mostly metal enclosures, far away from any flying fields, and for just minutes at a time, the possibility of interfering with anyone, much less being triangulated down by some hypothetical big bad authority figure who has nothing better to do than drive around all day trying to catch broke modellers who are only on the air at extremely low power (less than 1km range at best - I wish we could get that) amongst all the other interference we put out just running our motors etc is vanishingly small.

Of course if you went and did something stupid like telling an insurance company that someone at your event was running on an illegal frequency I'm sure they would try and use that as an excuse to wiggle out of any payouts (thats what insurance companies do best after all). But I'll bet you that most of them wouldnt know what a frequency conflict was unless you told them anyway.

The radio-techs unofficial advice was "play nice", be aware of your own frequency control at your event, make sure you arent running next door to a flying field (since airplanes crashing into houses upset people a lot more than crashing remote control cars do), and dont worry about it.

What you do is of course up to you.. as far as I'm concerned its not my problem to enforce the authorities broadcasting regulations, thats between you and them

Last edited by Spockie-Tech on Tue Jul 27, 2004 9:55 pm; edited 1 time in total

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Originally posted by original_carnage:

But for frequencies, 27meg is permitted in Aust., but there is a good chance of interference (which is why few people use it). 40meg is also allowed but few importers/wholesalers bother to bring it into the country for some reason (probably because there are approx. 40 channels usuable across 27 and 29meg). Just check with your local hobby shop for what 4+ channel radio gear (usually for aero's) can use 29meg crystals, there are some out there - I use a radio set that can swap modules to allow 27, 29 or 40meg from the one Tx unit.

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Like I said I am not out to anger anyone. My info about radio frequencies comes from the vice-president of the aussie model aero regulatory body (who just happens to own the hobby shop I do some hours for on saturdays) so I guess it must be a rule of thumb, as you guys say.

However I have known three people (2 RC cars and 1 RC heli) who were dragged through court (and heavily fined) for being caught using 75meg!!!
Be careful using radio gear within 3km of airports / RC clubs as these radios will broadcast (interferrence) further than they can acurately control a RC vehicle - just friendly advice remember. I agree, it does help limit the range being inside a building, as has been mentioned, all I'm saying is be alert to the locations of airfields and RC clubs.

That radio of mine with the frequency modules is a Hi-tech Lynx3-D (3 channel wheel radio). It is a good set - with more programmable functions than I'll ever use - but it is now being fazed out in favour of a cheaper/ newer version.
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Well we have 2 x 9CAP's brought off the Robot Market Place and both run on 75MHz. We also e-mailed the ACA and asked about running the radio's. The response we got was along the lines of we can buy the frequency we run at for quite a large sum of money, or we could just ignore them and they'll ignore us. It also turns out you can leagally run any frequency you want if you are 50km away from Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and the Gold Coast.
We also e-mailed Futaba about buying 40MHz recievers and frequency modules for the radios and they told us they don't make 40MHz radio's. Boy, did we laugh about that.
We went to the local hobby shop to ask about the price of 40MHz PCM recievers and frequency modules and it seems it'll cost about $250 for them. Thats about half of what we paid for the radio's. The bloke at the shop also didn't understand when I asked about using an 8 channel reciever on a ground freqency. He seemed to think you were nuts to use more then 2. We should have taken a robot with us.
Either way, since using these illeagel radio we have had NO radio problems at all over any distance. For every fight we were in we ran our robots from the corner of Jeffs garage that people were complaining about having radio trouble in and we didn't even realise it was a bad corner.
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Originally posted by original_carnage:
However I have known three people (2 RC cars and 1 RC heli) who were dragged through court (and heavily fined) for being caught using 75meg!!!

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Exactly what I was thinking. In my own experiences I have found that in general people that work in model shops dont know their stuff in any detail. They actually resent robot builders so no offense but a Rule of thumb will not come out of a model shop, what will come out of a model shop is confusion, negative attitudes and a belief that you cant do that. I always feel sick when I have to go to my local hobby store to get anything. If you dont have a rc car then it seems you are the anticrist.
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I would have to agree with Brett; there is already a large amount of RF around airports on many frequencies. All the security and most of the support staff have 2 way radios, plus all the taxis and surrounding industry generate even more RF.

The authorities probably like to keep RF to a minimum and would discourage extra RF on principle but our radios have a vanishingly small chance of causing problems with avaition.

Having said that, its a bad idea to operate R/C gear near an airport 'just in case' With all the current security & paranoia, even the most innocent activities can get one into trouble

Recalling the old days with CB radio, only the nutters with massively over powered linear amps ever seemed to get into trouble and all the rest of us happily broke the rules without hurting anyone or getting caught
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Originally posted by Nick:
there is already a large amount of RF around airports on many frequencies. All the security and most of the support staff have 2 way radios, plus all the taxis and surrounding industry generate even more RF.

The authorities probably like to keep RF to a minimum and would discourage extra RF on principle but our radios have a vanishingly small chance of causing problems with avaition.

Having said that, its a bad idea to operate R/C gear near an airport 'just in case' With all the current security & paranoia, even the most innocent activities can get one into trouble

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Well, its is a bit of a sore point as the robot builders have found that it is near impossible to get legal ground frequency radios in Australia with more than 2 or 3 channels that aren't wheel radios (although some like wheels) in addition. So some have instead purchased 36mhz radio's to get the channels and features they want.

Also, combine this with the requirements of 29mhz (and 36mhz) radios for antennas over double the length of 72/75mhz for equivalent reception quality (quite a handicap in a robot with limited antenna space) and the general unavailability of base-loaded short antennas, and things like PCM systems in 29mhz, and quite a few builders have further decided to go to the american radios in an attempt to improve radio performance..

Noone wants to get their bot smashed to pieces because of poor radio control when there is a better alternative easily available.

Its not your fault you didnt know, but you'll find most builders would prefer it if you leave the enforcing of the radio spectrum up to the ACA and just quietly use what works.. We've been through it before and having someone read us the letter of the law which is nearly unenforceable & uneccesary naturally isnt very popular.

I think it would be a bad idea using any hobby radio control equipment any where near an airport. Anyone who has ever seen the Blues Brothers knows that the way to detonate a bomb is with hobby radio. The one application for pcm that I would not argue over. If I was runing security at an airport I would have something listning for things like hobby rc carriers.

Way OT here, but the remote detonator of choice seems to be a stolen mobile phone; more anonymous and longer range. RC gear is very crude by comparison, but all the above still stands, of course.

Since I don’t think our venues are anywhere near airfields or RC flying parks, it’s a non-issue anyway

I heard that Valen (Jake) is looking at UHF with radio modems. He had a very cool, microscopic transciever at Marayong last week and it looks do-able.
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Once again I appologize if I tickled a sore point, I wasn't meaning to be reading anyone the riot act... it's just that I come across alot of people these days who buy on the internet without realising about different frequencies in different countries.

Just a side note though, Futaba, JR (e.g. JR378) and HiTech (e.g. Lynx3-D) bring out multi-channel radio gear (often 6+ channels) that you can change the frequency modules from e.g.36meg to 29meg. At AUS$300+ they are pricey though! (no I'm not trying to sell them to you guys).
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Last edited by original_carnage on Thu Jul 29, 2004 10:59 am; edited 1 time in total

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Originally posted by Nick:

Since I don’t think our venues are anywhere near airfields or RC flying parks, it’s a non-issue anyway

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