Originally Posted by
AussieWings
Aaron, Ted, thank you both.
How does this look, in your opinion?
1st TX : Taranis FrSky X9D-SE
2nd TX : FrSky Taranis X9 Lite ACCESS 2.4G 24CH Radio Transmitter
The trainer I am interested in is the E-flite Apprentice 1.5 M basic trainer. As best as I understand, this cannot be bought without electronics pre-installed. In that case, do I buy Taranis/FrSky receiver and controller units? If you could point me to recommended components, that would be most helpful. Is it true that there won't be any need to disturb the servos installed with the aircraft at point of assembly?
Grant.
It should be fine. If you are talking to Aloft Hobbies, find out if "The Linker" will work with the radios. It should, but things change. That is an extra cost option you can add on anytime to have full wireless buddy boxing between the two.
An Archer R6 would be a good base pick for a receiver.
For the Apprentice - you'll have to take out the receiver and the gyro control unit, and sub in the R6. Servos, esc, etc. can all remain exactly as they are.
Note with the R6 you will NOT have stabilization or any of the other flight controller functions of the Apprentice. It will just be a basic RC airplane. In our club, four out of the 6 instructors have Apprentices for teaching and love them. We never instruct with any of the stabilization turned on. It can actually slow down the development of the eye-hand coordination. If you will always have an instructor, you can easily do without. It is an excellent plane to learn on.
If you really must have stabilization, there is the SR6 receiver, that has it built in. But it is not an out of the box solution. One more thing to configure and adjust, usually with a number of test flights to get it all working as you want.
Alternatively, in concept, you could get a Multi Protocol Module which in should then let the Taranis control the built-in items directly, no second receiver needed. I have not researched this, to see if there are any "gotchas" in doing it. I think, again, this is an added layer of something-to-deal-with that as a new one to all this, you should reserve for another day.
If you will be swapping out equipment in the Apprentice, make sure the manual or sources on the internet, define for you how much each control surface should move up/down right/left. The OpenTX systems move the servos more than the typical Spektrum system by default. That is easily adjustable, but it helps to know what the optimal is, so you know how much to adjust.