ORIGINAL: ram3500-RCU
That is fine Bob, but why does that bother you? As far as it being a 'requirement', it is not. All of the JR receivers only have two antennas. And you don't need to use three or four to make the system work.
Many guys set up there expensive planes with more than one RX for redundancy. What is the problem? And if you do that with your system, you will be paying much more than 30 bucks for that redundancy.
I do monitor the reception of each RX, as well as battery health, servo health, engine performance, airframe integrity, mechanical devices, and more. No big deal to me. I want me planes to last, and be as safe as I can make them.
OK, so you would fly a DSM2/DSMX system with only one receiver? I don't think that would be a good idea...
Redundancy only increases reliability *if the system can operate with only one of the multiple components* That is, if your system *requires* two or more of a certain component, then your system is not as reliable as a system that requires only one. Its a basic tenant of reliability analysis. If the Spek DSM2/DSMX system would work perfectly well with one RX and they *then* gave you the opportunity to increase that by spending only $30 to double the reliability, I'd be all over it. The fact is though, you *have* to have multiple RXs (and fiddle with their placement, etc.) to get a reliable link and that means that their system is inherently less reliable than a system that can work with only one RX.
The perfect aviation example is the "light twins" that Cessna and Piper made in the 70s-80s. They had two engines, but the problem was, they were extremely marginal on one engine. Two engines means twice the engine failure rate as a single, but in this case, when one of the two engines quit, the airplane crashed. The end result was that their safety record (and reliability) was much worse than single engine aircraft and they eventually went the way of the Edsel...
The manufacturers did try a lot of stuff to try and save them, advertising, tweaking this and that, but the fundamental issue never went away and so, after awhile, when better singles came out, those models went away...
If DMSS ever comes to the entire market and it works as well as the other major brand 1 RX system out there (and as well as the other JR stuff works), then Spek DSMX, Y, Z etc. is headed down the same path...
Bob