RE: Is Spektrum worth it?
Fortunately, all the major brands are quite good. I did do some tests (not on enough samples to be reliable) and they did show that the Futaba and Airtronics did withstand negative drop outs on the receiver bus a bit better by about a tenth of a volt which makes them marginally better than Spectrum from a possible brown out. How ever, if you make sure you have a stiff (low internal impedance) power source, heavy duty wire and heavy duty switch between the receiver and power source you should be good with any of the systems. This is one place where dual batteries connected to the receiver through switch from each battery will eventually pay off in reliability.