The following is just a probably not very interesting rant and observation so sto preading now if you are not interested.

I opened up a brand new TX last night and found that Spinmaster has been doing a little work - hopefully to remedy some of the inconsistency and quality issues that they seem to have in production. They really need to do something about all the planes that don't work right out of the box. Only one of the 2 planes I bought last night worked. That brings my recent total of working AA bipes to 1 out of 4. The AA is agreat plane but I am getting really tired of the constant trips to TRU to return brand new planes that don't work. The first 2 of the last 4 would not charge. When I returned the second one last night I asked to put some batteries in the 2 that I wanted to buy and verify that they worked before I bought them. Both charged up, so I was happy to buy them. Unfortunately, I didn't bother to test that both TXs were working, I just hooked both planes up to the same TX to charge. When I got home and put battieries in the second controller, I found that it will charge the plane but no control signal reaches the plane. My other TX on the same chanel runs the plane just fine. Unfotunately this one is intended to be a gift, so I kind of need both TX's to work. I am sad about the situation, not only because of all the driving I have been doing to TRU, but also, because I don't see how Spinmaster can continue to sell a product with 75% returns. I would really hate to see the AA disappear.

Anyway, back to the changes that Spinmaster has made. When I opened the TX (the one from the plane that did work) I found that there is a new fuse attached to the lead out of the top battery. The plastic case also has a new mold. There is a little spot molded into the bottom casing to hold the fuse as well as some writing on the battery area. They definitely have something weird going on there with the many leads coming off of differnt batteies. I really wonder what is going on as far as charging, sending signals, etc. with different votages. I wonder if we could save batteries by figuing out which batteries are being used for what finctions. Anyway, the writing on the case is "0V" on the bottom battery hump, "4.5V" on the 3rd one up from the bottom, there is also a "6V" and "9V" on coresponding battery humps moving upward. Obviously this is talking about the voltages at those points, and I think there are leads coming from each of those points.