Originally Posted by
heavyaslead
Build thread here if you need one:
http://www.sead.us/kitreviews.html
http://www.sead.us/leoreview.html
The Leo is (IMHO) the best Tamiya tank you can get engineering wise and reliability wise, much better than the WWII tanks. Also better than many other brand tanks.
I have battled extensively with the Leo's and they always perform well.
They have the most up time of any of my collection.
Oh, and they work very well with the 2.4GHz FAAST Futaba system if you want to use a PCM type radio.
Note: The Futaba FM Ground Radio per Tower Hobbies, is now discontinued: http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0093p?&C=JEJ
Update: The Futaba FM Ground 4 Channel Radio that Tamiya USA recommended to me for both the Leo 2 and Type 10 builds, as recently as the Summer of 2015 and several years before is
now discontinued. Prior, the Tamiya USA's tech told me that the Futaba FM Ground Radio worked best with the Leo 2A6 DMD to operate the Stabilization Unit, Lights and TBU. And as with the Leo 2, their message was the same, to operate the Type 10's TBU reliably, the Tamiya USA tech in 2015 recommended using a Futaba FM Ground Radio (
to fix TBU operation issues as posted on rcu tanks by other builders using various make 2.4 radios, including the basic 4 channel Futaba 2.4 radio and the Japan Market Kit Tamiya 2.4 black radio).
I did read your Leopard build report a long while ago, before purchasing my Leo 2 kit, very well done report. Thank you. I used the Futaba 2.4 FAAST System in my 7 Channel Gepard Flakpanzer, another Daryl Turner commissioned collaboration project. Really a neat radio, but I also needed to buy a separate 300 page book and weeks of study to get good things to happen with the Gepard rc setup, as a new to the FAAST radio, but experienced user (
large sailplanes).
So, just maybe, the expensive Futaba FAAST 2.4 Radio is
now the best choice for a
new Tamiya Leopard 2A6 rc build, if the builder wishes to reliably access all the models rc features.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CIEKBVY...I3OOF29ZX8ZYVH
My Opinion: I think Tamiya's flagship model's plug and play, reliable, electronic packages are somewhat dated now in regards to not operating all that well with a basic 2.4 radio. As an example, the Type 10 kit was kinda disappointing, the electronics package seemed cheap. While the new turret operating features were nice bells and whistles, still, I did not really care about them. What I did care about is that the Type 10 model carried over some of the vices of the Leo 2 and introduced
a naked DMD circuit board to the build, which is a huge step backward.
John