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OP
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Is the last sentence correct?
Thanks.
Sometimes they’d get out of range of the radio signal, and wouldn’t respond to the transmitted orders. Once in a while they’d head north, with nothing between them and Canada to slow them down. Bye. Most times, one of those oaks got in the way of a plane incommunicado.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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There is definitely a piece of the sentence missing. Incommunicado means that there is no way for you to communicate, or something is impeding your communication.
There's a couple of things off with the sentence though.
If the writer meant to say that the great oaks blocked their communications then it would have been better to write: Most times, one of those oaks got in the way of the transmission from the plane and they were left incommunicado.
(better be one hell-of-a HUGE oak though, or their radio signal is really paltry, because a bit of walking and you'd be out from under the tree.)
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Thanks bel,
The plane receives the transmission, which is sent by the radio controller in the hands of the person on the ground. When planes lose radio contact, the flaps etc. would all return to a neutral position and they just keep on going in whatever direction they were headed at the time. What the author, me, is trying to say, is that they often crashed into an oak after losing radio contact.
Does read better?
“Sometimes they’d get out of range of the radio signal, and wouldn’t respond to the transmitted orders. Once in a while they’d head north, with nothing between them and Canada to slow them down. Bye. Most times, when the planes were left incommunicado, they’d fly into one of the big oaks.”
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Carpal Tunnel
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Ya, much better OB, and much clearer when we now know you're talking about remote-control planes. I think the "nothing between them and Canada" part is really funny. I can see it in my mind's eye. 
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I think I'd recast as:
Many times such an incommunicado plane will buy itself a funeral in an oak tree.
Your reference to those oaks is suspect because your quotation hasn't mentioned oaks before. If those oaks are between here and Canada then there is indeed something to slow the plane down.
TEd
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Pooh-Bah
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I'm not sure I would use incommunicado to describe an RC plane that was unable to receive signals except in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way. The plane never had the ability to transmit information back to you in the first place, so technically it cannot be deprived of the ability to "communicate." If Maoist rebels captured you and deprived you of your control device, it could be said that the plane crashed because you were incommunicado.
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I'm not sure there's a big, big threat of Maoist rebels on the way up to Canada.
They're already there, centered around Maoistbreath, Saskatchewan.
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Pooh-Bah
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Well you never know what sort of baddies are lurking out there. Take, for example, this shocking news story (audio) that I recently heard on the radio. ( transcript )
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Thanks all. This is a passage from chapter 6 of childhood memoirs that I’ve been beating to a pulp for the last year or two.
TEd, I mentioned the oaks a few paragraphs before this. The planes don’t die, they get stuck, but I like the way you phrase it. My friend and I would go retrieve them in hopes of getting a few bucks (American) when we returned them to their owners. We didn’t fly the planes, we watched and hoped they would get treed rather than captured by some Montreal Maoist, or land safely on US soil.
Alex, I am trying to be tongue-in-cheek, and you are correct, the planes only receive instructions. Maybe that was the problem, they were receiving transmissions from the powerful radio tower in Maoistbreath, such as "An army without culture is a dull-witted army, and a dull-witted army cannot defeat the enemy, fly northward."
I may have to completely rewrite the thing into a spy novel.
I’ll take my salad dressing on the side please. The side of righteousness and freedom!
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Owlbowl it sounds as if your writing career is about to take a great leap forward.
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Carpal Tunnel
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But next month DOES have 31 days!
TEd
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