"Good news!"

"The oracle has spoken... "Any aircraft that was eligible to fly last year can fly this year..." The geofence is only required for those that choose to take advantage of the staged withdrawal thing. Apparently version 1.1 of the 2010…"

"I can only speculate on what may have triggered the Outback Challenge rule change. My guess is that the competition organisers are trying to ease up on the 5 second rule, and the staged withdrawal is a mechanism to avoid having to crash planes after…"

"Didn't know that it has changed until now but I guess it is so that no body wins or any one serious would attempt it :)."

"So upon reading the new rules I see no real drastic change because it still allows for alternate failsafe systems to be used as long as safety is maintained as stated: 5.6 Flight Termination All teams must implement a flight termination mode. Teams…"

"This is already done since 20yrs in EU. Millions EUR flying to 'hi-tech' companies under conditions they employ at least 100 persons and growing. So nothing new. The universities and lawyers only contribute to the mix - they are government…"

"Make the prize "1 Million dollars !", but have arcane rules that insure no winner? How does this drive innovation ? Some teams may find a solution that the contest did not anticipate, maybe it will improve UAV performance??"

"That's OK. But the prize shoudl be 5x higher."

"These guy must be following the lead of FAA"

"This always ends like this when ppl that never did XYZ tell you how to do XYZ safely."

"And the saddest thing is that the nice guys at Millswood Engineering developed a special failsafe/flight termination board for the competition, and then then new rules made it useless because it doesn't detect an exit of the flying zone. They…"

"The wireless frequency is an Australian Law thing. They aren't banning them, simply saying you can't do anything illegal."

"I agree. The new rules are completely over the top, and require stupid stuff like a stunt pilot certification and ban some common wireless frequencies. We were thinking about participating in the future, but not any more. There are better…"

"MillswoodEngineering has something developed SPECIFICALLY for OUTBACK challenge. But the recent rules are ridiculous, requiring the failsafe in fact to be able to define concave polygon flying zone and trigger when out of the flying zone. Also a…"

"Well, you can use an ArduPilot just as a failsafe. At $25 it's hard to beat the price and it's very small, open source and flexibile."

"yeah I've looked at that one before but I was kinda wanting a DIY project too and something a little smaller. Thanks for your input though Chris, much appreciated."