Switch disarm while in flight, crashed, how to make disarming safer?

Hi Steve-I fly my SkyViper 2450GPS with my Taranis radio and an Orange module. What might be useful to you is my parameter file from Mission Planner. It contains all the config info I use. Then ask specific questions if you like. Note that it’s the V3.7.0dev version.

SkyViper 2450GPS AC3.7dev.param (15.5 KB)

I know this is a year later, but I wanted to chip in.

Mid-air disarm should only ever be possible in special circumstances. Mavlink uses a magic number in its disarm packet to specify this mid-air disarm. Normally with Mavlink you do not set this magic number so attempting a disarm in mid-air fails.

Now, without Mavlink you have “motor emergency stop” that kills the motors instantly.

i.e. you ALREADY have an option to safely and quickly without delay kill the motors.

Disarm should not disarm in mid-air. There is no need and Mavlink does not do this after all.

See https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/16077

We discussed the linked PR at today’s DevCall, bit did not come to a determination to accept or reject it. Please read Randy’s post on the PR to understand why.

@tridge also suggested people could do this transmitter-side by requiring two switches be moved to activate the disarm function. I’m not sure how easy/hard it would be to implement a true switch interlock on OpenTX. I’ve suggested in other places that a physical cap on the switch would help prevent fat-finger accidents, too.

I use a dual switch setup on OpenTX for my arm/disarm. SB needs to be in the desired Arm or Disarm position but the action doesn’t take place until I hold the momentary switch SH for two seconds. I can move SB all I want in flight and nothing will happen. Pretty quick setup with logical switches.

What I did is the last option - 5s delay and voice message.
It happens sometimes, that when i do rapid pitch forward I hit arm switch with my finger.

Additionally in all my models I have engine cut feature assigned to one particular switch, and I have trained my brain to flip it every time I see that I don’t gonna make it ! :smiley:

To summarize:
As first resort I have one switch to turn stabilize mode quickly - all models the same switch, and I have been practicing switching it as panic button no 1.
As second resort I have engine cut as panic button no 2, when I can see I won’t avoid crash, but I want to reduce damage.
Therefore disarm can be safely delayed by 5 seconds, as engine cut will provide safety.