I have owned an Aurora 9 for about 3 years now. I love it. The built in electric telemetry is great to know the health of your battery. It's easy to program with the touch screen. No messy satellites to deal with either, one simple antenna. The other great thing is the price, it's a good deal cheaper than most of the other name brand radios and the Hitec brand is carried by almost everyone.

Originally Posted by beerfly

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Sailplane enthusiasts encouraged to weigh in....

BeerFly. I flew JR for a long time, the x347, x8103, x9303/9503, 10x and 12x and loved them. Flew a 11x for about 18 months and it just did not fit my hands and the slider on the back was uncomfortable to work. Guys with larger hands loved it though.

I have not played with the new JR xg series. I have heard that some shortcomings in prior software have been fixed. ( It is my understanding that the new xg11 will activate landing mode with the flap stick. I have not actually used it yet.) Also the new xg series has telemetry. But if you have JR or spectrum receivers they are not compatible with the new xg series.

I wrote a long guide on the 9303/9503. The programming of all the JR radios is not the easiest to learn for lots of different reasons. At sailplane contests, the most common radio is the x9503. (It has been around for a long time)

When the DX18 came out, like all radios I have tried, I tried to program it with out a manual. I had never seen Airware before so it was completely foreign to me. Took about two hours and it had features the 11x did not have like the ability to activate the landing mode by pulling down the flap stick. (setting up flight modes took the longest, but once I figured it out it was a breeze after that) The programming of this radio is really easy compared to JR. Although the radio has only been out for a little over a year, I saw quite a few of them at Visalia this last weekend.

I do not have a DX9, but the programming is a lite version of the DX18. I have held one and played with the programming. The sliders on the back are much better than the 11x, but are still a little awkward. I suspect, like anything else, I will get used to them. There were already a few of these at Visalia.

The DX8 is slimed down even more.

The DX8, DX9 and DX18 all do telemetry.

I also had an Aurora 9 and found it was missing one mix for a contest sailplane pilot. You rarely see one at a sailplane contest. I do not know if the new 9x has remedied the mix issue. The programming on the A9, with its touch screen was pretty cool.

I flew a Stylus (no longer available). It was heavy and a real bugger to program. Without basic information (because of the two line screen) I had a real hard time tracking stuff in my head. It was by far the most difficult radio to learn to program I have ever owned. For a while, this was the ONLY sailplane radio to own.

The new Airtronics SD10 does all the sailplane contest stuff and does it well. If you have been flying JR or Spectrum, the style of programming will be awkward at first. It is popular on the contest circuit and uses some of the same terminology of the earlier Stylus. I don't know of the longevity of the radio. Airtronics pulled all its sponsorship deals from the top sailplane guys using them. Most shifted to JR or Spectrum and a couple went to Futaba. No one really knows what this means.

I would recommend two things. See how one fits in your hands and make sure the radio has will all the features you need.

Clubs are great. It is always good to buy a radio (if this is your first computer radio) that someone else in the club already has so they can help you get over the hump.

Good Luck

Sherman Knight
Team Horizon Hobby Sailplane

Sherman,

The 11X with 0002-0100 software can be programmed to activate the landing mode by the flap stick. While I haven't done that, I've programmed my 11X to go from launch to cruise by pushing forward on the elevator. Same idea on a different stick.

Allan

In Japan, were JR, Futaba and Sanwa/Airtronics have their headquarters, the most popular radio among competition glider pilots is the XG11 nowadays. The SD-10 has a share of 10-30%, depending on club and field. Horizon does not offer any Spektrum radios over there. Don't know why.

http://img.kmga.f3b.jp/20121126_224546.jpg

The SD-10 costs around 300 bucks today. It's not too much dollar even for competition sailplane pilots. We can conclude that Airtronics does not only support some of the top pilots but all of us. Thank you!

Originally Posted by AWorrest

Sherman,

I've programmed my 11X to go from launch to cruise by pushing forward on the elevator. .

Allan

This sounds interesting. What do you do for Cruise and Speed? Do you also have landing mode activated by the flap stick?

Sherman Knight
Team Horizon Hobby Sailplane

I've posted the set up for changing flight modes by the elevator stick on https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/show...6#post26397938 The LAUNCH mode changes to NORMAL (Cruise) when the stick is pushed forward about 60% from neutral. This is meant to give the pilot a bit of breathing room after a zoom launch or a tow pop-off. After the excitement passes, the flight mode switches should be set to NORMAL. All the other flight modes are conventionally switch selected.

I prefer to be required to manually switch to LAND before the flap stick becomes active. While flying RES before I started to use flight modes, at times I would unintentionally move the stick, not notice it and wonder why my plane was flying poorly.

On the 11X and 12X and I believe on all the XG series, crow can be initiated by the flap stick without any special programming. This is done by setting the BRAKE START POS and using the POS(0) for all the crow settings. BRAKE START POS is unlike the 9303 offset. Nothing happens until the flap stick is pulled passed the designated position.

If there is a need to switch to LAND mode solely by the flap stick, it wouldn't be hard to add a stick position switch to the flap stick and use the CUSTOM FM.

Allan