wojtek

My Feedback: (73)

There has been a lot of discussion lately about the 14mz and whether or not this is a reliable and safe radio. Some claim it is riddled with problems, others have had nothing but success. Many like myself, would like to get this radio but are on the fence ..on one hand there are all the channels and functions, and on the other reports of an inferior RF link, software lockouts, and a few instances of lost planes. So if you own a 14MZ, please vote indication your experiences with this radio .


http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_48..._1/key_/tm.htm


Voy

Tony abw60

Hi Woj
I hope you get honest votes for this, how many are going to own up after having spent so much money on it.
Just a thought.
I don't own one and have no desire to own one, but as I said on the 14mz Post even 1 possible crash through a design/software fault is too many with a transmitter or tx for that matter.
Just my 2 pence worth

Tony

swissflyer

i have the tray brother of the 14MZ, and i'm very happy with!

she work with me from the small depron model with a 4 channel RX up to G3 receiver and Weatronic.

Here we have a direct support forum at Robbe (EU dealer of the radio), and there is a german forum (http://www.t14-forum.net/index.php?) where i can found every kind of help and information

so i don't know if i can vote, as the question is 14MZ, but the FX40 is a jewel!

digitech

My Feedback: (10)

just needs a keyboard input so one can press cntrl-alt-del

jetpower

I just love my T14MZ what a transmitter[sm=thumbup.gif][sm=regular_smile.gif][sm=49_49.gif][sm=teeth_smile.gif][sm=thumbs_up.gif][sm=shades_smile.gif]
i have it now for 18 months now and have no problems at all .
it is so easy to program.

erbroens

As I would like to justify my vote, to keep things clear: As my radio crashed between 2 jet flight sessions, I voted in (4), if this didn´t happened to me I would voted in (3), because of system crashes while setting up a plane, and a additional problems with the receiver.

Other than that, I liked very much this radio, until this happened.

Enrique

Will B

I am INCREDIBLY happy with my 14MZ. I fly jets, helicopter 3D, and large prop planks with zero issues whatsoever.

In fact here's a story. A good buddy of mine, Peter Wales, a big scale helicopter guru was on his annual vacation in England from the States. I was flying my Fury and in his jet lagged state he switched on his JR 10X on the same channel as me with his aerial half up. I didnt even know about this til I landed. I did not lockout . To date I have not even had a single glitch or lockout using 3 PCM G3 receivers, and the rest of my Rx's are 149DP. I am totally confident with the radio link in either 2048 or 1024. On top of that the features are a blast, and very simple to use. The 2048 resolution, the cool features/mixing possibilities, the ability to update the OS via the CF card and store model setups on my PC, the sythesised frequency control and the new gimbals have taken RC to a new level for me.

I'd not fly with anything else now.

rjbob

My Feedback: (8)

This poll, in my opinion, is bogus. Not because of the basic idea of the poll but because of what I suspect (read "I suspect") are guys who are poisoning the poll.

There are some, including Enrique, who have legitimate gripes but there is no way 21% have crashed or almost crashed because of a radio fault. If one crashes becaused he/she programmed the radio incorrectly or operated a switch by mistake it shouldn'be represented as a radio fault.

I highly suspect that there are those who have intentionally voted in such a way as to influence the poll in a negative manner.

There certainly are problems with new radios but most will be the fault of the operator.

Enrique...again, I know yours is a legitimate reason.

erbroens

Thanks, I think that your point is valid. Any poll could be distorted by error, but I made a survey about this subject and found people who
crashed their planes because of the receiver associated with this gear that had answered (4) in this poll... not exactly a problem related
to the transmitter but pertinent as well. And of course, a anonimous vote on a legitim transmitter error is very possible too, based on the
integrity of most people I know here.

So far. we know now for sure about 2 people who reported this problem with the transmitter. One with a memory card problem, and myself with a crashed windows...

Enrique

wojtek

My Feedback: (73)

i don't know about that !!! i have 3 PMs I have received with people telling me their stories of crashed planes ! I know of at least 2 - 3 others now besides that ... the number of people who reported problems does not sound unrealistic to me []

As for the %tage, i think this poll needs to run for around a week or so to have a more realistic result.

I for one do not see why anyone would want to poison the results ... just no reason in it....

Voy

Woketman

My Feedback: (6)

I too believe that the results will likely be more negative than reality probably because anyone who paid that much for a radio and then had issues is far, FAR more likely to seek out this thread and cast his negative vote. The guys that are happy with their 14MZs are more uninterested with a few of them voting.

Having said that, the jet community is small, word travels fast.

Will B

Voy,

personally I do see a reason that the poll could be poisoned. Any of the "blue screen of death" taunting mob that dont know diddly squit could easily falsify the poll just to satisfy their own ignorance.

From my own observations it would appear that the US Radios on the 72 Mhz band DO seem to be experiencing more problems than over here in the UK & Europe on 35 Mhz. I seem to recall people in the US who were experiencing issues were reccomended to shorten their receiver antennas. This just fuels the fire of the "anti MZ" gang......some people just love to hate.

Silent-AV8R

Well said. I would change the emphasis in your statement above to:

"US Radios on the 72 Mhz band do SEEM to be experiencing more problems.."

Once again the Internet can distort reality. A guy with an issue will be more likely than a happy camper to put up a post. Mine and everyone else that I know personally with one (+ or - a dozen or so) have had zero issues in a wide variety of aircraft. Everything from jets to giant scale to helis to exotic CF and kevlar gliders. Rock solid. That is little consolation to folks that are having issues, but it must be made clear that this radio in reality is no more prone to problems than any other radio.

For instance, I personally have seen three Brand A radios completely lose everything on startup over the past 4 weeks. All of them happened at major glider contests. Guys turned on, screen goes wild and all is lost. Another very experienced and reknown glider guy had issues during a crucial fly off with his Brand A radio. Probably cost him the contest.

I have seen Brand J radios have issues of lock out in Comp-ARF giant scale planes. Nobody else at the field. Planes are lost due to inexplicable lock outs. There also seemed to be an unusual number of jets with issues at a fly-in in Arizona earlier this year, with one particular brand of radio. Yet I do not recall a huge thread on this forum about what a terrible radio it is.

Point here is NOT to try to bash other radios. It is to illustrate that ALL brands can, and do, have issues at various times. Many are simple failures, many are user error. All get blamed on the radio. I do not think one brand works any better than the other. I have owned all three over the years and base my decisions on the features I want rather than any worries about reliability. Compared to what I started flying 40years ago our radios are virtually error free now!!

Ehab

My Feedback: (44)

Give this poll a chance hoping all voters will be honest to themselves and to the poll....I want to see a successful 14+ channels radio since I am in the market for one. I do not care what brand it is, I just want a super jet radio........

wojtek

My Feedback: (73)

took my thoughts right out of my mind ....


Voy

Ron Stahl

My Feedback: (12)

I have 2 at my job and we just spent a week testing a new design. I had to program both radios to be the same one day in the last 2 weeks and during the manual input of the programing from the maiin TX into the spare TX the radio lost all of the data that had just been input. It displayed a backup data error and I could not reprogram the data until I rest the spareTx and deleted all of the models in that Tx and start over. It was quite a pain in the ##s to have to due so but so far so good. The main TX has never failed us.

DelGatoGrande

My Feedback: (23)

....i own the 14mz for three months now.when i got it i download the update form ripmax uk...never failed me until now...80+ flites with my 33% aerobatic..

i still havent install it in my f-15 that i still have there my 9c..... from my side the only point that i felt vary sad with my 14mz vs 9c

was when from quriosity we measur the signal with a wat meter ....my 9c has double the trasmiting power.

LGM Graphix

My Feedback: (22)

Well from the results so far I sure couldn't buy this radio and have faith in it. Even if the last 3 poll choices combined only equaled 10% instead of the 45% (there's 2 % missing somewhere since the happy customers are only 53%) that is still one in ever 10 radio's with some issue. Doesn't instill me with any confidence. It's my opinion and ONLY my opinion, but it almost seems like Futaba released this radio to soon and are using their customers as the beta test group. I'm sure there are 10X's that have failed in the past, but I've never seen a post on a forum saying "10X has serious problems" or anything along those lines. It's to bad that there is no way in this poll to verify if all the people who've voted actually have this radio or not, the votes could easily be shifted either way, while there are people who are anti futaba that will vote that it's crashed a plane when they don't own one, there are the futaba supporters who some I'm sure will vote that it's perfect when they don't own one either. Gotta take people at their word and hope that the results are accurate.

Romeo-Alpha

Seems like there are a LOT more problems with the "14mz owners" here than in the 14MZ owners forum where only real owners can get in. I think the poll is flawed because there is no telling who is voting, whether they are just Microsoft or Futaba haters, etc. When I see the problems in the actual 14MZ forum, I'll start worrying. Mine has been flawless and has 52 models in memory at this point. All have flown and no crash has been due to the radio, just the same old reasons I used to crash with my Krafts and Prolines...

erbroens

Well, I finally received a note from Futaba as well the Radio. (still to be cleared on the Brazilian customs office) . I guess that they didn´t mind if I share the diagnostics with you here.

Seems that in the way to the U.S. some switches where broken and they covered them in the guarantee as well, a nice attention from them.. however they spent 2.4 hours on the radio changing the main board but they didnt´t have a precise diagnostic on what went wrong ... it may have been a defective component (?) or a virus (??) imported by a flashcard... (no chance of this happening ,because I never used one).

I hope that this mainboard will be later analyzed carefully to fully determine what really happened as well the programming code inside it, however as they already sent the radio "fixed" with a new mainboard I doubt that we will ever know...

As I stated before, this radio will be sold (with a complete explanation why I am selling it to the new owner) and substituted by a Futaba 9cap or a 12mz system...

About the poll statistics I had my conclusion... all I can say to people is to be careful with their gear, and never believe that something is flawless. Always keep in mind that you can lose contact with your jet anytime by a miriad of causes, and we must be careful where to fly and how we fly as well carefully select the equipments we use to minimize the chances of this happening.

Enrique

wojtek

My Feedback: (73)

the fact that Futaba even sees the posibility of a virus getting into the radio software ( via whatever means) is of serious concern enough ..... I personally wish this radio did not have so many issues as I would be going out and buying 2 of these right away ...


Voy

tomcatman

My Feedback: (2)

I would love nothing more than to stick to Futaba which I have faithfully used since I got started in this hobby back in '88. The idea of 14 channels just truly blows my mind. However, what really truly crawls under my skin (besides the current issues reported thru this pole) is that with both the 12 and 14 channel Futaba radios, you pay a ridiculous amount of money and they don't even come with servos. That's just outright wrong IMHO. I mean C'MON...$2200 !!!! No servos??!! Yea, yea, it has windows..whoo hoo!! How about the 12Z? No windows...$1400!! AND, no servos. Maybe it's just me, but to pay that kind of money and hear people having these kinds of issues? I don't think so. When was the last time a thread was put up to report such problems with a Multiplex? At least, I've never heard of such problems with it or ever JR for that matter. Even though there is a lot of speculation with regards to Spread Spectrum Technology, I really do hope it delivers for a much cheaper price so that the people over at Futaba can stop acting like the Saks Fifth Ave of the hobby. If I want to pay an overinflated price for a brand name, I'LL GO TO SAKS FIFTH. In the meantime, this is a hobby and people should be getting what they're paying for. In the case of these 2 radios, I don't believe we're getting what we're paying for. Just my opinion... Regards,

Richie

erbroens

Well... about the systems being sold without servos makes sense. The users of this kind of radios have very specific servo requirements and giving to them basic servos would be useless. And there is no such a "generic" high end servo.. that would imply
in accepting 5 servos in a spec that is not a exact match to your needs (and also a $500 increase in the price tag) , so I guess that
this is the correct way to do things...

About the radio prices that are too expensive... they are not at all if they work as they are supposed to!

Enrique

tomcatman

My Feedback: (2)

I respect your opinions Enrique, but for these prices, I WOULD EXPECT 5 HIGH END SERVOS WITH THE SYSTEM!! That's my point... I can't help but take for granted that a user who feels the need for this type of high end radio, uses high end servos and they should be included for $2200. Again, this is merely my opinion. Regards,

Richie

BR289

My Feedback: (106)

Guys,
Alot of the reasons the prices are inflated is due to the development cost. I have both radios and the are really great. Its very simple for me to do what I want with them, but of course this comes at a price.
I in a way can see some logic to the issue of no servos, but then again why not throw in some Hi-Torque, Metal gear servos....cant miss with those be it a Jet, an Aerobatic plane, whatever... I am sure the person buying either of these radios isnt putting it into a trainer.
The idea of Microsoft taking over the world and now our hobby seems ridiculous....and is just crazy talk.
I have yet to use the G3 receiver in anything, nor do I plan on using it in anything in the near future...that I am just not sure about it yet. I think the problem is we just dont get "Concrete" answers from Futaba and anyone that reads the posts or even the person that gets their radio back from service is always kept wondering what "Exactly" was wrong if anything.....
As far as the Die-Hard JR users, they have their share of problems too. My friend has a 10X that worked fine for a few years and all of the sudden things would change in his "Software" and crap like that....Point is ...it happens no matter who the manufacturer is.....
Technology is awesome these days, but definately not "Bulletproof" and those who expect it to be just because they paid more arent being realistic.
Blair