I agree that for the "average" modeler, a remote telemetry system is probably a bit of overkill. Cool, very cool, but not really needed for day to day flying. Even real pilots are taught to fly (VFR) looking outside the cockpit most of the time. I could see this system being useful though for someone who wants to fine tune their engine or fine tune their flying, or for someone who is curious how fast or how high they are flying. You might even be able to use it to go back and debug if some funny "glitch" in flight was due to radio interference, a wind gust, or pilot input. If you could combine it with some sort of gps (position) and attitude sensing system you could go back and analyze your entire flight in great detail, I bet a lot of aerobatic guys would be interested in something like like that ... how vertical was I on that climb, how round was my loop, etc. etc.

I am someone who is dipping his toes into the UAV waters as part of a university project (and I have a separate low-budget home project.) This sort of telemetry becomes much more interesting and useful for monitoring the health and status of your aircraft if you are up for longer flights or trying to do something utilitarian while flying (like aerial photography.)

I'd love to see them figure out a way to add fuel level to their list of data channels. :-)

I've got a little flight computer that can read your transmitter input and then drive up to 8 servos. It occured to me that if you rigged RPM sensors on each engine for a multiengine plane, the computer could read the target throttle setting from the transmitter and then drive all engines to exactly the right RPM so your props are always exactly in sync. You could have the computer do all sorts of interesting things in a scale bird ... you could control your pilot's head in more complex/natural ways rather than just tying it to you rudder servo. You could program complex gear/door retraction sequences without having to build really complex linkages. A computer geek could have all kinds of fun with an onboard computer. :-)

Curt.