Originally Posted by bigroger

I don't want to get into radio wars but at my club, especially on Sundays when it's busy there's always several planes smashed into the ground from altitude related to brown outs of lost signal.

It's always spectrum, jr, hitec radios every time.

Don't know why, but then again the Imac guys at my club run jr 2.4 but have never had issues except occasional loss if bind on setup of the plane in the morning.

Not sure what that's about... I've seen a a few signal drops in my days, equally among brands. But I will say I see about 10x more spektrum rx's and tx's out there on a daily basis, so it would make sense in theory to see a few more errors.

Similarly when people say they've read more hitec servo problems than other brands, usually it's because you'll see 100x more hitec servos out there than say savox or solar, but when 1 of 20 solar servos fail it's still way better than when 12 out of 2000 hitecs fail! (Disclaimer-no numbers are accurate)

The only radios I've ever been told to shy away from by the few dudes who have competed for years and always give me their honest unbiased opinions are the turnigy radios and hitec radios... They always tell me JR, Futaba, and Spektrum are the way to go with TX's... I used to have futaba, but damn they can get expensive and there weren't as many items available in the classifieds when I needed them!

My only guess for why you haven't seen a futaba fail at your club is there probably aren't as many futaba users, and the one's who do dish out the cash for futaba, probably set their planes up correctly. Lots of beginners use spektrum radios so you'll see more failures with them accordingly!

Originally Posted by bigroger

I don't want to get into radio wars but at my club, especially on Sundays when it's busy there's always several planes smashed into the ground from altitude related to brown outs of lost signal.

It's always spectrum, jr, hitec radios every time.

Don't know why, but then again the Imac guys at my club run jr 2.4 but have never had issues except occasional loss if bind on setup of the plane in the morning.

We sort of have the opposite. Not a lot of brown outs, but the glider guys...one in particular, usually gets lost in the clouds.

His glider came spiraling down a little ways off and he was looking up locked into someone elses glider thinking he was still flying. For some reason ALES is really big at our club.

Most 2.4ghz radio issues, IMO are setup problems. ie. brownouts (inadequate power and unreliable BECs). I've flown mostly futaba, but almost have as much time with Hitec and only issues were user related mostly on the futaba in my early electric days. Hitec with the SPC virtually eliminates the chance for a brownout... Nice feature. Also have flown with guys with spektrum and if on the newer technology and setup right went without issues too. So I believe if you setup a system right all will be well, and I fly around a area with bad interference.

We have an unlimited ceiling... Tom has a funny story of the day he found the vertical range of the DX7 with a AR7000 Rx. Probably not that funny in writing so I'll spare you the details...

We've used Spektrum from day-one and have now accumulated no fewer than 15 receivers from the 6200 to the 9100. We actually had a brand new Futaba 8FG Super, but it just didn't feel right to either of us. Sold it, new in box, to a fellow club member. To be fair, we lost a very nice 25% Extra 300 that flew almost incomparable for 53 seconds before a signal failure caused its demise. It was a tough pill to swallow because it took a long time to assemble that plane. It turned out to be the Tx (DX7), and it took a while to figure it out since we never considered it. A fellow member is a Futaba fanatic, but he watched a 50cc plane disappear over the horizon (no pun intended) while shrugging his shoulders and throwing sticks in desperation. They all do it for one reason or another.

But, four years later, and the one major Tx failure, we still have original 2.4 DX7's and 9303's and still no plans for another Tx brand. The only other one we would consider, Futaba, flew one plane twice, and then found another home.

Originally Posted by bryansifsof44

Most 2.4ghz radio issues, IMO are setup problems. ie. brownouts (inadequate power and unreliable BECs). I've flown mostly futaba, but almost have as much time with Hitec and only issues were user related mostly on the futaba in my early electric days. Hitec with the SPC virtually eliminates the chance for a brownout... Nice feature. Also have flown with guys with spektrum and if on the newer technology and setup right went without issues too. So I believe if you setup a system right all will be well, and I fly around a area with bad interference.

Correct--- almost all the issues I've seen with brownouts happen to people whom I know half-ass their setups... Not saying that's always the issue, but most of the time I believe it to be... Not too long ago a guy at my field had a plane fall out of the sky on him and I asked him what his timer was set at, he had none... Well, you could blame your radio, or you could blame the fact that you just flew your plane for almost 10 minutes without a timer!

Yeah. Just for clarification, the vertical range of the DX7/AR7000 mentioned is very VERY high up. The plane, almost directly overhead, was a stick as I saw the trailing edge of the wings with a little thicker blob in the middle representing the fuselage. I wagged the wings back and forth to maintain a bit of orientation before eventually the smart-safe kicked in and the ailerons held last position for a second or two resulting in a few rolls when my stick was centered. It came back and I killed the throttle and let it stall and fall back into range before simply waiting for it to descend nose down for quite some time at idle (probably 45+ seconds). I remember it was all at full throttle, and after over 10 or 20 seconds of vertical climbing I could no longer hear the motor, which I found a really cool representation of how high the plane was because I can ALWAYS hear that motor when it's at full throttle. After that happened I continued climbing at full throttle for probably another 15 or 25 seconds... so it was waaaay up there. We don't have an altitude restriction at our field because we're not within 3 miles of an airport, so as long as we yield right of way to full scale when they do appear, we're all good!

--Tom K.

But if you want all out range there was some testing using FPV and Hitec went about a third as far as the nearest competition. But unless you fly FPV all systems tested (with full range RXs) went further then the naked eye could make out.

Originally Posted by bryansifsof44

But if you want all out range there was some testing using FPV and Hitec went about a third as far as the nearest competition. But unless you fly FPV all systems tested (with full range RXs) went further then the naked eye could make out.

This is a friend of mine a few years ago. He was a great guy and really bright, but kinda fell of the map about two years ago. 9303 and spectrum receiver. He was way out there:

FPV out past the end of the "Rope" (6 min 32 sec)

--Tom K.

Couldn't find the link I seen before with the results but anyways.
In RC Sport Flyer magazine December issue... Hitec came out way ahead in range. They ran out of line of site road way at 6.3 miles. Next closest system was Jeti at 4.7 miles. Spektrum lost contact at 3.95 miles. Not that most of us need that range.

Isn't 3D about keeping it close. If your 3d plane is out farther than you can see, you are doing it wrong.

Originally Posted by _OZ_

...you are doing it wrong.

--Tom K.

Originally Posted by _OZ_

Isn't 3D about keeping it close. If your 3d plane is out farther than out can see, you are doing it wrong.

+1, lol!

Ya probably not important to most of us but we were just discussing range and I thought it interesting.
Still couldn't find link but here is a little discussion on it.
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1803355

Originally Posted by _OZ_

Isn't 3D about keeping it close. If your 3d plane is out farther than you can see, you are doing it wrong.

Now this is funny, and usually the most common line I throw around at my club with guys complaining about their colour scheme and not being able to see the orientation of the plane.

"fly lower" I always tell them.

I'm amazed how high some of the guys fly. Circle flyers that get themselves a mid wing aerobatic plane because they want to get into aerobatics.

They see me do all that crazy shizzle, and because they can do a single role of their glow powered Ugly stick they think they are ready for a 50cc scale extra, or sbach etc.

They are so frightened of the things that they fly further away and higher then I can see clearly then complain about the poor colours of their planes.

LOL.......

I suspect the radio discussion about pure numbers is probably right. But would also flight frequency also come into it? I fly futaba 8FGS, had the 6EX before that and never had a glitch. Only fly electric setups, but compared to the average club flyers I would do 6-20 flights every time I go out, whether its to the club or the park or the backyard. the average club guys at my club will do 1 maybe 2 flights in a day and they are happy.

The number of trainee pilots of high wing glow powered things on buddy boxes that have the planes brown out and go in is very high in occurrence. Maybe its a setup thing, poor connections, dirty power, etc.......

I even heard the club President explain to a new pilot that you never let your Rx power get above 4.8V as extra volts will fry your Rx?

Maybe in the old days buddy but we is talking about 2.4GHz systems right?

Brownout is not a radio issue, but a BEC, battery pack, and/or servo issue.