Originally Posted by
Corsairacobra
My son received a Taranis X9D for Christmas, thanks Santa. I believe I will be placing all of my future planes on it (60 model memory), it is quite the radio as I'm learning some of the amazing things it can do. I have been broken in on 4 and 6 channel Futaba's with minimal programming capabilities and this Taranis is in a different league.
Franklin, thanks for the recipe to accomplish the audio telemetry I desire.
I now feel confident I will be able to abide by the 400 foot ceiling.
How cool! I also got one for Christmas, and you're right, it's pretty daunting to learn, but HIGHLY capable. A trusted friend has one, and he strongly recommended it. In fact, of the programming, he said "there's multiple ways to achieve the same thing" which is nice. Plus, you can't beat the "cost per channel" of them. I compared Spektrum at between $40 per channel (DX8) to $60 per channel (DX20) vs. Taranis at about $17 per channel ($280/16).
I've updated my sound files already to a slighly less computer sounding female voice (from my test flight days, science shows that female voice warnings produce higher response rate, in both men AND women).
In fact today I just bought a GPS unit and LiPo voltage sensor for telementry for a low end HobbyPower S500 MR. I've been trying to kludge together native telemetry out of an ancient APM 2.8 module. It's possible, but requires some homebrew electronics interface for the APM. I don't need it all and I'm going for a more simple approach w/ the FrSky GPS and Lipo. My next MR will have PixHawk, which can output native telemetry (GPS and other info) to FrSky w/o additional equipment. I'll put the GPS into other planes and helis as I need them.