The company is certainly full of challenges to work with and get support from, but after using their systems for the last few years, in my Futaba 14mz, I'd be hard pressed to give it up.
It's been like there has been this curtain pulled back, and I can see what's really going on.
For example, I can look at signal strength on each antennae and connect that with its gps location, essentially being able to 'fly' it around it's recorded track on a laptop afterwards, and see weak area's.
I've fine tuned my antennae locations 5 times in my SR-71, slowly stomping out weak area's, that without the information, I would have been clueless about. What's enlightening is that there are specific angles and distances, that can be weak area's, and I would have never known. Is it nice to know, that on a particular flight, 5 times, I was down to 10% signal strength on both antennae's, hovering just above a failsafe? To me it is.
I also like knowing exactly what airspeed my bird takes off at, lands at, what a good approach speed looks like, what a good landing pattern speed looks like etc.... Connecting airspeed with gps track, lets you see what is going on at any part of the flight.
A feature not often noticed on the big receivers, is that they run on, and only drawn down battery 1, until it reaches a certain voltage, then cuts to battery 2. It doesn't draw from both at the same time. So if everything is working properly, that's one less battery to keep charging back up. Or, if what happened to me last outing, it has cut over to battery 2 way earlier than it should, something's up, and I've got this blinking red light in the plane telling me that it's kicked over to the backup battery, and that I should dig into it. If for some reason, battery 2 fails, it will try back to 1, then 2, then 1, doing it's best to keep running. I really like this concept better than drawing down 2 batteries at once.
Lastly, I really like the flexibility in the totally open way the receiver's can be setup with a laptop. I've got 24 servos plugged into the receiver, and can adjust any one of them, in travel distance, curves, put them on any channel, reverse them.. anything you could do to a servo can be done on this simple interface on the laptop. I've got one setup that when I throw a switch, it sequences 4 servos, one at a time, in an order and and pace that I can easily control.
I guess another way to look at it, in a single receiver/box, I've got the equivalent of 15 matchboxes, power handing system, 3 gyros, and a gps, with a 'fail-on' switch keeping it running.
It's not for everyone. If you like digging in and learning something just a bit technical, I think it's a great solution. If you don't want to know anything about the details, and just want to crank out 15 flights a day, day after day, it might not be for a person. I'll also say that the instructions are decent, and the system is pretty intuitive / easy to figure out. I think that for most people, they have good results with the gear. The problem is, is if you go off the path, and do have an issue, getting support and guidance from Germany is very difficult. The problems that others have had, are all quite valid, but have been exacerbated by poor response from Germany. If they were handled with what should be a pro-active customer service attitude, like many of us are used to, it probably would have diffused many people's irritations.
I've had my issues as well, but eventually gotten most of them resolved, but not without an enormous amount of patience.
Would I buy their system if I had it to do over again? Yes. Do I wish they would get a clue on the public facing / customer service side of things, yes.
From my understanding they are primarily a collection of electrical engineers, and the gear is all made in Germany, so from a quality and design stand point, I see why it's so far ahead of offerings from the competition.
I just wish them luck getting the service /
PR side of things on a better track, because it's more of an anchor holding them back, to their success than they seem to let on.
Lance