Safety Comes First
ALLEGED CyA glue hazards: In my "Safety Comes First" column that appeared in the September 1988 issue of Model Aviation I stated that I disagreed with an allegation that CyA (cyanoacrylate-"instant" glue-Ed.) glue, when heated to 525º Fahrenheit can emit hydrogen cyanide in a quantity that "will be 10 times the threshold limit and be fatal." In the December 1988 Safety column I included excerpts from a letter from an industrial chemist that, in my opinion, conclusively refuted that the emissions could be fatal when the glue is used for modeling purposes.
Safety Comes First
THE OTHER SIDE of the coin: If I write something in this column which results in my receiving letters which are all opposed to what I have said, then I must be doing something wrong. However, as a result of the discussion on transmitter power switches being inadvertently turned off which appeared in the April safety column, letters appear to be about equally divided on whether to blame the stupidity of such incidents on the pilot or on the person who designed the transmitter. Since I took the position that I felt it was not stupidity on the part of the pilot that caused such incidents, following is the other side of the coin expressed extremely well in a letter from Jefferson City, MO modeler William Stodgell:
Safety Comes First
WHITE KNUCKLE airline passengers are those who fly under a great deal of stressful worry about their safety-they grip the armrests so hard their knuckles turn white. This relates to me in the following way: When Pan Am Flight #103 disintegrated over Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988, I was visiting relatives in England. So it was with some trepidation that I boarded my return flight to the U.S. on another Pam Am flight (also a 747). No, I am not a nervous air traveller, but on this flight I did spend some time wondering what is a passenger's first sensation when a bomb explodes in the luggage compartment.
Safety Comes First
BAARRROOM! That's what it must have sounded like when a Sailplane winch battery exploded recently. I think most of us are well aware of the possibility of an explosion when attempting to jump start a dead car battery. However, until last month when I opened a letter from Gene Pastori, I had never heard of a car battery exploding while it was being used to power a Sailplane winch. Gene's letter contained the following account of the incident: "I would like to tell you of an accident we had at our club field. We were holding our December Sailplane contest when the winch battery blew up. Acid flew all over the place, and the battery just flew apart, sending shrapnel all over the field and acid all over us. It was a good thing that we all wore glasses so no acid got in our eyes. However, I do have a ruptured eardrum as a result of the loud noise of the explosion.
Safety Comes First
STRUCTURAL FAILURE: Airplanes, both full-scale and models, require that certain vital parts have sufficient strength to withstand the stresses that they will be subjected to during flight. Full-scale aircraft designers go through a lot of calculations, and conduct extensive testing to ensure that the end product will perform in the intended manner without falling apart in the air. But what about those who design model aircraft that are to be sold to the general public in the form of a kit? Do the companies that produce these kits do any calculations or perform any tests to determine the necessary size of a wing spar or thickness of a sheet-balsa stabilizer to prevent breakage during high-G maneuvers such as the corners of a square loop? I don't have an answer to this question, and even if kit manufacturers do satisfy themselves that their products have adequate strength, who is to say that you, the purchaser of the kit, are going to do a sufficiently good job in building the model to prevent it from falling apart in the air?
