Again, I will remind everyone this is not an open discussion forum.

Futaba, and every other radio manufacturer, recommends range checks and even provides a mean to lower the RF power output in order to do them.

But they are a qualitative event in that there is no set distance that means pass/fail. Generally they should be used to establish a sort of baseline range for that model which you can use to compare to if you have issues down the road. They can also hep reveal gross issues. I think since the 2.4 systems seem to be so much more reliable than the older systems from an RF standpoint some feel that range checks are not worth doing. But I agree, people have gotten lazy, but they are no less important today than before.