I finally pulled the trigger this week and ordered and received my first Frsky radio. I have been interested in trying OpenTX for a couple of years now but never saw it in action. That changed after our recent Fun Fly event hosted by Eutawville had a guest pilot show up with his Horus 12 radio. He had owned Graupner and Jeti and loved his Horus.

I did some comparison shopping and knew Aloft Hobbies carries Frsky. I was surprised when I added the radio to my shopping cart that the shipping was not free. I was told getfpv also sells them and they do ship for free (USPS Priority shipping). Since I was already an Aloft customer and I have bought several Top Model sailplanes from these people and have also sent business their way I figured I will give them a chance to not lose a sale. They had no interest in offering free shipping or even lowering their outrageous $28 shipping charge! I also told them their competitor was not only free but they were tossing in the R9 module for free. So they lost that sale and I will discontinue sending business their way. I had a bad servo from them last year that required me to ship back to them at my expense. Plus they had no stock to replace it. Not good.....

Anyways back to Frsky. What I really like are the costs of the receivers. This is where Graupner gets you. They have been steadily increasing their pricing and now a 6ch gyro receiver is $100! A 8 ch simple RX is $65. I fly sailplanes so I need 8 ch and a vario, from Graupner that will run you $95. From Frsky that same setup is $35 and vario is integrated into the RX. Gyro receivers from Frsky are $28. Huge savings. Plus GraupnerUSA aka OpenHobby is constantly out of stock. At the time of this post they have zero stock on the MZ-24 Pros and 16L receivers. I'm sorry but how can they be out of stock on their radio?

So it's time to look at something different. I spent the afternoon reading some articles and watching Youtube to install OpenTX on the X10s. It's not easy, it's not hard. It requires some Googling to figure out what to do. As usual these vendors require Windows or some OS to install. Why they don't read the firmware off the SD card and do the boot loaders from there is beyond me. I had to install something to patch the USB drivers on Win 10 to get the OpenTX Companion software to see my X10s. Once that worked loading was simple.

One important note, to install OpenTX you need a 32gb micro sd card or smaller. The Horus radio does not include any micro sd card. It will not support a 64gb or larger card. So I had to run to BestBuy and get a 32gb card, everything I had was 64gb.

Trying to use OpenTX without reading a manual I think will be impossible. I usually don't need a manual but this stumped me. It's very different. I have owned JR, Spektrum, Hitec A9 and Graupner and never read a manual past the binding process.

Overall the build quality looks great. The switches appear to be good quality. What I love is this radio has no POTS on the sticks. They use Hall Effect sensors which is cool tech and no POTS to wear down and get dirty. The screen is gorgeous and works easily in direct sunlight, that's something my Graupner MZ-24 cannot claim. It's true the Horus radio has no touch screen, that is good and bad. Many of the soft buttons on the Graupner were so close I was constantly resetting values because they have no spacing between the increase/reset/decrease buttons. Time will tell how much I will like the navigation buttons vs a touch screen.

First error, I need to order a STK. This is a dongle that allows you to configure and update RX's. It's cheap (~$10) but shipping is never cheap anymore.

I have been so busy building my Alpina the X10S is being ignored

I did learn how to setup a throttle cut and expo. It's not hard, just different. I even got a picture of my foamy loaded up. I'm getting there!