Preferred rc radio Futaba or Spektrum or ?

[Ken Haines]

LOL

Spent the first 10 years driving Toyotas. The next 10 years driving Chevrolet. Now its all Fords. Mixed in a couple foreign junkers along the way.

Now I drive the biggest baddest most expensive Futaba I can get my hands on. And I have no good explanation why.

Doug

Doug,
Just waiting for you to haul in that New "Biggest, Badest" Racing trailer next year !
Maybe we will see it in Michigan ?
I am sure it will be amazing when you finally take the leap.


I own Spektrum, Futaba, And Airtronics.
The waterproof MR 3000 receivers convinced me to go almost all Spektrum now.
Some cool features on that DX4S too. The capability to change servo speed is pretty
intriguing....not sure I have totally utilized it yet. The analog rate knob does enable
me to make changes during a race, at least in offshore where you can actually
use this fine tuning tool for an edge. The best thing for my forgetful mind is the
alarm that chimes when I leave the transmitter on. I am sure the other brands
will soon have these features too, but for now Spektrum DX4S is my radio of choice.
Ken
PS. I have no radio sponsorship

[T.S.Davis]

Just waiting for you to haul in that New "Biggest, Badest" Racing trailer next year !

Did you have a chat with my wife? I got the green light to buy one too.

[DPeterson]

Ken

Just waiting for you to haul in that New "Biggest, Badest" Racing trailer next year !
Maybe we will see it in Michigan ?
I am sure it will be amazing when you finally take the leap.

Terry

Did you have a chat with my wife? I got the green light to buy one too.

Thats good stuff Terry. Ken - I am planning on a nice one - but the bar you set will remain. :)

Just waiting for more sponsors. I got George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Hamilton, and Andrew Jackson on board. I working on lining up Ulysses S Grant, Benjamin Franklin, William McKinley and Grover Cleveland. LOL-Sponsors for toy boats.

Back to radios. My very first one was an Airtronics. Then for some reason went to Futaba and remained brand loyal. I still own all these 30 year old square box's.

Doug

[T.S.Davis]

My Airtronics is from right around 1983. So for me to speak ill of Airtronics isn't really fair. The grip is my only experience with their newer stuff. I've simply not spent any time with their modern tech. It is a touch pricey but don't we always say you get what you pay for? Cheap radios are only cheap if they don't fail and blast your boat into shore. Then the price goes up. Of course they don't all do that. Probably most don't. Plenty of "works perfectly" claims. That's fine. I just can't get my head around trying to save money on the very most important piece of the puzzle. Like buying that Ferrari and then putting little doughnut spare tires on it to save money. They put you in the wall. Did you save money?

If I do a trailer it will be a multi-purpose utility trailer to get to and from. It wont be a fancy palace with air or satellite TV like that lunatic from Florida. Although based on that example, maybe an extinguishing system is in order. Just for means of egress. Best installation I'll hope to never use.

[BILL OXIDEAN]

Airtronics

A lot of top drivers the world over run Airtronics in fact, THE fastest nitro SAW driver in the world runs it at Legg Lake Mark Grim and he's hitting over 120.
THE fastest car driver in the world raced for us up until this year Adam Drake. Ryan Cavalleri Races for us and he's a top 3 driver in the world.

Many of the top car drivers run Airtronics. I think one of the truest statements made on this thread is that you can't really go wrong with any radio these days. I see plenty of boat racers running Airtronics as well.
Airtronics has been selling radios long before I came along, so they don't need me to pitch radios on here. I don't need to convince a few people on here what the world already knows.
I could bash other radios as guys are doing Airtronics, but any outsider can look at this thread and see through it.

As the ad says "Airtronics get the advantage!" I don't know about you, but I'M gonna' keep getting the advantage

[raptor347]

Mark still runs his old Airtronics radios from the days when he was sponsored. All the new stuff he's paid for is Futaba. Just keeping the record strait.

Like I said, it's hard to buy a bad radio these days. I was sponsored by Airtronics for years and had very few problems.

If you're in this hobby long enough, you end up trying just about everything.

I started flying with an EK single stick 5 channel. My first surface radio was a brown box Futaba with a wheel.

Good equipment tends to sell itself.

[T.S.Davis]

.
I could bash other radios as guys are doing Airtronics, but any outsider can look at this thread and see through it.

Yes, fortunately guys on this forum are pretty bright and can see through BS.

[NativePaul]

Radios were one thing I was looking at at the worlds and I couldn't help noticing the diversity of radios in the very large and professional Chinese team, there were new radios, old 2.4ghz converted 40mhz radios, stick radios, wheel radios, air radios, surface radios, high end radios and low end radios but they did have one thing in common, all were running Futaba FASST in one form or another. That is a good enditement to my mind.

[BILL OXIDEAN]

Yes, fortunately guys on this forum are pretty bright and can see through BS.

I think most of the guys on this forum see you contradicting my every post : )
Go enjoy something in your life. Its obvious my enthusiasm in this sport peturbs you. Im sorry you feel so bitter inside
I truly hope things get better for you. Otherwise you can continue and prove me right..

[Doug Smock]

Toy boats fellas. Please drive on with whichever radio you prefer.

Thanks in advance,

[T.S.Davis]

Not sure this was bashing on Airtronics or contradiction so I read back through my posts.

I said "I didn't like the way the Airtonics fit in my hand". I even admitted that my choosing based on the grip might be weird. You said try the M12. So I asked if you had it in CO. I remember carrying it back to you pit area once at the 10 nats after a retrieval or something. It happens. I remembered the grip. Still not quite bashing.

I asked how much difference in latency. You said "I've noticed this lag in response to be close to a second in some cases" If you're turning 15 second laps a 1 second lag works out to about 58 ft. Holy crap! I've not experienced anything like that with my Speky but I've also not driven with Airtronics lower latency to compare. Airtonics uses their latency as a marketing tool. I just wanted to know what the difference was. If it is truly important their should be numbers somewhere that we can compare. Futaba, Spektrum, Airtronics, maybe a Flysky side by side. To say "we have the lowest" they need to know the others. This isn't bashing it's simply a quest for knowledge.

As for bashing I even said this about myself.
"My Airtronics is from right around 1983. So for me to speak ill of Airtronics isn't really fair. The grip is my only experience with their newer stuff. I've simply not spent any time with their modern tech. It is a touch pricey but don't we always say you get what you pay for?"

I simply am ignorant where Airtronics is concerned. I couldn't really find any Airtronics bashing. Your posts actually did make me look at them closer so mission accomplished I suppose. It appears that they may actually be the shizznit. Especially with the addition of the a marine rx. They have everything that I like about Spektrum and maybe the low latency you described. They are pricey but if it's truly better you can't put a number on that. Futaba guys don't worry about the numbers. They believe in the product and pay a bit more to get it.

I pointed out that people are smart enough to recognize BS when they read it. Not sure how that's a contradiction. At least there were no abject fabrications in this thread. That's positive change.

[properchopper]

One specification I haven't heard addressed in this thread comes to mind (I found out about it while doing Helis -thanks to Wilmer} is something called GRANULARITY which, as I understand it, is the number of steps in the throttle channel (or other channel) pot. Turns out my el cheapo heli, in hover, would go UP or Down but there wasn't a throttle position that allowed an intermediate step between these two positions. Seems to me that more granularity in a radio's throttle channel would give more sensitive speed monitoring. No mention of this in radio specs. Thoughts ?

[Doug Smock]

My throttles have two positions Tony. ON and OFF.

That's what I like about the Spektrum. I can pull the trigger completely through the handle without damaging the radio. LOL

[properchopper]

My throttles have two positions Tony. ON and OFF.

Mine has three : ON, OFF, and OH SH*^ !

[BILL OXIDEAN]

Mine has three : ON, OFF, and OH SH*^ !

I'm not gonna' lie Tony, in the last like season and a half, you've REALLY gotten to know your stuff.
Before you used to talk about intermediate stuff, but now you bring up points that most overlook. Literally making lightbulbs pop up.
Great point about the throttle steps.