AndyKunz

Thanks, Ken. I was told years ago that it was bad form, and even had some of my links removed. Nice to hear of the change in policy.

Andy

sensei

I guess it doesn't make any more difference than about 25 years of experience, but whatever... I was really just establishing credibility in your statements. Now that's done we can move on to (expensive airplanes). Expensive airplanes is all in the eyes of the beholder, I personally don't think what you have listed and pictured above as an expensive airplane, in fact it's more of a throw away airplane, but that's just just my opinion and nothing more. I am only really interested in either a very lightly wing loaded foamy airplane or a true Giant scale lightly wing loaded airplanes, I have no use for the stuff in the middle and never really have, again my opinion, and to be very honest all this stuff is really just preferences and opinions and you know what they say about opinions... Happy flying hot shot, I do wish you the very best.

Bob

BarracudaHockey

My Feedback: (11)

As long as I've been a mod here, the policy is no links to the home page of a competing forum to solicit members.

Links directly to a thread that is applicable to the discussion is fine so long as that content can be accessed without requiring the user to create an account to view it.

Years ago there was a squabble with FG but that too is in the past.

Stevojet

My Feedback: (1)

DX18QQ Update....1st flights after getting transmitter back from HH:
I did a half dozen or so flights with a foamy that were uneventful so today I progressed to my sprint with one uneventful flight. Tomorrow I plan to fly my Gryphon sport jet and see how that goes.
I have recorded no holds or fades to date since the return from HH. Also I note that frame losses recorded per flight are lower than before, not sure what that means but I am taking it as a good sign.
So far so good..
to be continued.......
Steve

AirmanBob

My Feedback: (14)

sensei.. Anything over about $2500.00 is expensive to me because I'm retired. I'm lucky to have all the planes and quad copters that I have and I can't afford too many crash's. Therefore I mostly use radio equipment that has never let me down, yet.

I recently discovered Motion RC and wow, they sure have some nice foam jets at great price's. Those might fit in my budget. Happy flying to you too.

STEVOJET... Hmmm maybe Horizon has found a secret cure for the problems some unlucky flyers have been having. I sure hope so. Good luck.

Bob

Rob2160

Here is is another one... I bought a brand new JR DSX9. It was faulty out of the box.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvIQNVTu5Xk

I returned it and got a 9503 which has been perfect.

In my book all the brands perform equally, I've had issues with a New Futaba, JR and Spetrum TX. These issues were all identified before flight and rectified/replaced. I have never lost a plane/Heli or multicopter due to radio failure in over 10,000 flights across more than 60 models spread evenly across the three radio brands.

YMMV.

Rob2160

Deleted.

Rob2160

Deleted

teambutter

My Feedback: (36)

HoundDog- You asked to see some links and so I posted some. I could have posted another 50 to justify it I guess but the point was you wanted links and you got them. Funny how when the Futaba factory issue with loose pots came up you say "it's a GLUE problem" but a Spektrum, JR, Airtronics radio has a problem and it is an issue with the brand across the board. In the end a glue problem is a FUTABA problem and a QC issue with them just like the ones EVERY OTHER manufacturer out there has to deal with on a constant basis. If you are brand loyal, then more power to you and good luck with whatever brand of radio you choose to use. At the end of the day this is a hobby to most folks and a way to have fun. It's funny but this is basically a Chevy vs. Ford type squabble...LOL.

chuckk2

Any product is the result of many compromises that were made to meet multiple goals.
Even important goals eventually get compromised.

"Brown-outs" did occur with the old analog systems. It's just that they were more difficult to identify, and the results were not as extreme.

Spectrum diversity, frequency hopping, and other noise reduction methods can be very effective. But, there always are compromises.
Whoever among competitors makes the best guesses and produces a usable product is judged as much by a competitor's product as his own.

Anyway, many of the techniques used today have existed for quite some time, and were in limited special purpose use.
The costs were generally prohibitive for consumer use.

To me it makes sense today to change the old 4.8V RX and servo battery voltage to a significantly higher one.
It also makes sense to modify/design RX's to be extremely tolerant of supply voltage. This has significant costs
in terms of size and weight, as well as cost and complexity, not to mention resulting compatibility issues with
older designs.

Many modelers are extremely price oriented. After all, it's a hobby.
At the same time, companies must produce a product that is sell-able to survive.

Even our military has problems with "price is no object" equipment, and often must compromise
product capability to meet price.

A recent example of the real relation ships between price, features, and costs That I ran across - - -.
Digital Storage Sampling Oscilloscopes (DSO) for the short name.
Pricing is based upon features, such as the number of input channels, frequency range, etc.
The exact same hardware may exist inside a unit that is rated at 75Mhz and in a 300Mhz unit.
The difference is often in the firmware only. Lower bandwidth units are sold with a narrower profit margin,
with the difference in the hundreds or even a thousand dollars or so. It seems a bid odd that a few bits
may be the only difference in the firmware for the additional price. Some of the mfrs deliver
a unit that comes standard with basic "industry standard" functionality, and charge a lot extra for various
software add ins that expand those capabilities. After all producing the same hardware, and changing the software
reduces the manufacturing cost, complexity, design complexity, etc. With volume discounts for the bits and pieces,
the costs can be very significantly reduced. Companies stay in business only by making a profit, as large as the market can
easily absorb.

sensei

At the end of the day all I can really say is that I have flown hundreds and maybe even thousands of flights with extremely expensive aircraft utilizing Spektrum equipment since 2007, and without a single hiccup. So I trust this system wholeheartedly. That said I have also had very good experiences using Futaba, JR and Airtronics over the last 3 decades as well.

Bob

BarracudaHockey

My Feedback: (11)

hehe ya, I'm going to have to find room for that F-14

John_M_

Not that I'm into foam'ez , but that T6 Texan looks nice, not to mention that Eflite CarbonZ T28, the big bugger... the 80mm Super Scorpion Jet looks neat too... ahhh, that feeling of never growing up keeps you young



john M,

tmaucher

I had problems with the first series of DX7 but all though slow Horizon stood behind their radio just not the lost planes sent it in, repaired it? Next year the same thing then I think they replaced the insides and sent it back. Since then no problems at all. Just bought a DX9 at the warbirds over the rockies auction hopefully I won't be a beta tester this time. PS they make a little capacitor that goes into the receiver it"s pretty cheap insurance for brownout.

Jim Branaum

My Feedback: (3)

Sorry sir, but your religious beliefs in binds are absolutely wrong.

A bind is and will be maintained on both sides of the TX RX system UNTIL THERE IS A BASIC ELECTRONICS FAILURE IN THE CIRCUIT THAT MAINTAINS AND DEFINES THAT BIND. To be sure you understand what was said, the electronic failure has NOTHING to do with power. I already mentioned known and published stuff about that particular problem which you ignored in your rush to smear me. Your book on connection is close enough to ignore because I am not as stupid as you seem to elect to think.

Please be so kind as to tell everyone exactly how they are to tell their antennas are not performing as they should without spending lots of additional hobby money and time learning more and more systems to keep naysayers such as you silenced. Are we supposed to start flying with on board oscilloscopes and signal analyzers next as these vaunted telemetry systems start to miss critical events because of design limitations? Then tell us how we are to land an aircraft that no longer gets signals from the transmitter for whatever reason while your expensive vaunted alarm is going off, assuming it works as you think it does. I think that would be very instructive of you and verify that you are as omnipotent as you would like to be.

Since you said "You are doing more than confirming the absolute range with this low power", you probably should say exactly what YOU think we should be doing here.

Before you launch anymore ad homonym attacks, go back and review the report of the incident. I tend to test carefully as we play with things that can be deadly. You should not imply otherwise unless you were/are standing at my side during this.

AndyKunz

Hi Jim,

In the Spektrum system, here's how binding works.

The receiver enters "bind mode." It is waiting for a transmitter to attempt to bind to it. It will do this as long as it is powered. If power is removed, if the bind plug is removed and you power it up, it will look for the last bound transmitter. If the bind plug is in, it will return to looking for a transmitter wanting to bind. When the receiver is in bind mode, it flashes the LED rapidly.

When the receiver hears a transmitter that wants to bind, it will tell the transmitter about itself. During this time, the LED will blink slowly. The tx and rx will negotiate the protocol to use, and the transmitter will tell it the GUID to listen for. The receiver will then save the new bind information (transmitter GUID and bind type) in EEPROM or Flash for later use. Then it executes the connect, and the LED turns on solid.

Note that the bind information in the receiver is not overwritten until it has replacement information.

On the transmitter side, when put into bind mode the RF deck will immediately erase the previous bind information (which is bind type and GUID to use). This will allow the transmitter to meet the timing requirements for transmissions consistently - a necessary item for the receiver to see. (It takes a "long" time to erase Flash/EEPROM; this erase-before-transmit is necessary.)

It will then begin issuing the bind message that the receiver is waiting for. It hears the receiver and works its side of the protocol negotiations, then saves the bind information where the erased bind used to be and then continues its transmissions at the negotiated frame rate.

If power is lost by the receiver, upon restoration it will immediately listen for the saved GUID using the saved protocol, using a special "re-sync" algorithm to find the required frequency at the proper timing. This will restore the connection.

If power is lost by the transmitter, upon restoration it will transmit according to the GUID/protocol that was saved during the bind process. It doesn't have to do anything special to restore the connection; that is all handled in the receiver.

I've explained this several times, both here and on RCG. With a little googling you may be able to find the references, if you feel they'd further clarify your understanding of the bind process.

As for non-power-related failure modes, there are only a few ways for a bind to be lost. One is with extremely high temperature for a sustained period of time, causing the non-volatile memory to be erased. I doubt this would be possible without other obvious major physical damage to the receiver or transmitter. An extreme EMP condition (atmospheric nuclear detonation? cosmic particles or rays?) could also cause bit errors in the memory which would prevent a reconnect. Over-voltage is another possibility, but it would probably require power insertion on the load side of the internal voltage regulation. I suppose extreme over-voltage on the servo bus could cause that, but I'm not about to try it myself. Some things that WON'T cause loss of bind data are a crash or power loss.

A connection can be lost by a host of means. As others have noted, a momentary power loss can cause the receiver to execute the reconnect mode. In the very first DSM2 receivers this could take up to 3 seconds; version 1.6 corrected this and reduced it to about 1/2 second. With DSMX the reconnection is established within just a few ms (less than 100). A connection can be lost due to an extremely low signal level - this can be demonstrated by doing a range check and then attenuating the transmitter by grasping the antenna with your hand or putting your body between the devices. Connections can be lost by having the antennas shadowed behind large conductive surfaces such as battery packs, engines, or carbon fiber (wings, fuselage, etc.) - this is why the physical diversity of antennas is important to all brands.

I hope this clarifies the difference between a bind and a connection. If you have more questions about how the stuff works at this level, just ask.

Andy

dirtybird

My Feedback: (5)

Years ago i had to repair two Logictrol receivers. The first two transistors were burned out in both cases. I called the factory and was told it was caused by solar flares. It had happened to a lot of their receivers.
Is Spektrum susceptible to that?

YellowBlueBird

Hello Andy,

I have a DX9. Each time that I bind to a new receiver the bind process has to be repeated a second time. It always binds on the second attempt. Other than that it has never missed a beat.

One other problem it just stares back with a blank screen when attempting to update.

None of the above seems to bother flying. The first two planes were small test subjects the third a sailplane which pretty well established that the range is adequate.

Comments please

Jerry

Rob2160

What distance do you have between the TX and RX when you bind?

I found 2 meters results in a perfect bind first time every time.

Any closer than that the bind process fails occasionally.

AndyKunz

I agree with Rob. This is probably a distance problem.

That is more likely to be an issue with the SD card. Try out the instructions toward the bottom of the attached PDF.

Andy

lawrence b

Went flying yesterday, DX8, 1/4 scale completely scratch built glass & foam Bf-109E-4. Radio worked again.

Larry B

Gene Margiotti

My Feedback: (4)

Andy,

Thanks for your information in post #116. That is an excellent explanation of the "binding" process and how it is maintained.

I just wish everyone would read that explanation BEFORE saying "Oh, I just lost the bind".

Gene

Been flying my jets with Spektrum for years and will continue to do so.

Lifer

My Feedback: (1)

dirtybird,

I remember E.K. radios but never heard of solar flares knocking out transistors. Was it some kind of E.M.P. issue?

YellowBlueBird

Distance is about 18 inches. it seems odd that it would be a distance problem and be so consistent since the distance remained the same. Not intending to be argumentative just pondering out loud.

I will try to update software with new memory card and then run all of my small models and sailplane before going to gas model

thanks Rob and Andy

jerry

Rob2160

Yes, 18 inches is likely the cause of the bind failure.

It had me scratching my head many times initially why the bind sometimes didn't work. I think Andy first mentioned being too close might be the issue years ago and he was right.

I have also noticed that different radio / receiver combinations are more sensitive than others to the "closeness" during a bind.

2 Meters seems to work in all cases.