The Futaba radio that comes with the NextStar Select doesn't have the best reputation. I was instructing on a students NextStar and had one of those fail - luckily the plane was in an attitude with the throttle closed in the landing pattern where it gently flew into the ground resulting in only a broken prop and bent nose gear. We checked the batteries and did a ground check, and everything was fine. But after a couple more flights on another day it failed again with the aircraft being a total loss crashing behind the parking lot.

For what you're going to spend for a replacement transmitter, you should seriously consider converting to a 2.4GHz radio. Two good radios that are at the lower end of the price spectrum but will last for years of sport flying are the [link=http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXPZT8&P=SM]Futaba 6EX[/link] and the [link=http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXTZU7&P=SM]Airtronics RDS8000[/link]. The 6EX gives you 6 channels and 6 model memory while the Airtronics gives you 8 channels and 10 model memory.

The Airtronics is getting known around my area as one of the best deals in radios, and very easy to program.

Hogflyer