I have had a total of 5 AR500s and 2 of them have been bad, so that is defintiely poor reliability. The first was one I got with my Corsair, it had an intermittent, but very repeatable aileron hardover command right out of the box. The other one is for my F-16 and it would not range test, failed to respond at 10 paces. Horizon replaced the first one, and I just sent the other one back to them for investigation. The replacement for the Cosair has worked flawlessly and I have a T-28 and Apprentice that have also worked flawlessly with the AR500. I put an AR7000 in the F-16 and it works just fine.

My experience is that if it works on the ground and range tests OK, then it also works in flight. If you see anything wrong on the ground tests, do not fly with it. Keep in mind that other things can go wrong and cause loss of control. I had the ESC "smoke" on my Apprentice and it glided to a hard landing in the desert, but that was definitely not a receiver issue.

Also be aware that in these forums, there have been several reports of the AR500 not responding to throttle at power up. This can happen if the throotle is not pulled all the way back when powering up the receiver. It can also happen if the throttle trim is moved forward, the next time the receiver is powered up it sees the throttle above neutral and will not respond. This is becuase it uses the last throttle position seen during binding as the neutral position. That is just something that you need to be aware of and it is well documented in the receiver manual.

Given a choice, it is best to go with a full range receiver with a satellite unit, like the AR7000 or AR6200. The AR6000 and 6110 are not full range receivers so I would not recommend them for the Corsair, because you can get that aircraft pretty far away.