Good afternoon Cees,

" Ed Kazmirski did use full throw for most pattern figures so maybe the best way to use the Orbit radio, but with European sticks you nearly did not have to move your thumbs so you probably were much faster and maybe for that reason the winner when compete.
And now? "

The toggle switches for reeds made contact with very little movement of the toggle. I don't have one handy but if memory serves me right it was almost at the start of movement- maybe 1/4 inch at the tip of the toggle. You didn't have to move it an inch or more to make contact. The full throw that Ed mentioned in his article on the Taurus was a full throw of the elevator position, not the toggle switch. He probably would hold the toggle full over for a loop since that just lets the lever go to a physical stop and lets it be easier to hold, but electrical contact was made almost instantly as the toggle was moved.

"MMC, is biggest problem (I think) “wrong model selected”, "wrong flight mode selected" or “wrong position of a switch selected”
Problems I never did have with my radio during pattern flying in the past, impossible. "

I will grant you that if you don't have the features you don't have the problems - but - I so totally enjoy the features of today's radios, the JR12x for example, that I would not ever go back. With the JR 2.4ghz radio I don't have to worry about the wrong model - it is impossible to select a wrong model. Wrong flight modes and position of a switch - indeed that is a potential problem but a pre-flight check list will take care of that. Full scale pilots always go through a check list to avoid that kind of problem and it works fine. I find it works for me also. Let's face it, when you have a removable wing that has one servo per aileron and flaps and motor control for twin motor airplanes, you can have a half dozen plugs to attach before flying A pre-flight check list is a must. The list says to check all control movements and directions and to reset all "rate" switches to the low rate settings. The transmitter won't let me power up unless the throttle is in the low setting - a complex but great feature.

I have a fairly good brain and it can handle the complexity of the JR12x reasonably well, but when I have been flying for a couple of hours and am hot and tired I will miss things like selecting the right model - and I have done it, luckily it was with a small foamy airplane. A pre-flight check list would have prevented that. So I go with a complex transmitter and a pre-flight check list - a very good tradeoff. I do believe that simple is not necessarily not the best but of course it depends on what you wish to accomplish.

"(Classic) pattern flying we normally did with one (type of) plane and when you were lucky you have an identical spare one. "

I crashed so much with the simple but unreliable radios that I rarely had more than one good airplane at a time. I agree with you on that.

Old radios:

"My pattern transmitter was custom prepared for the plane for all main functions, see the picture 5, 4 channel proportional with touchable trim levers in the front plate of both sticks (not somewhere else on the transmitter!), preselected 4 position flaps: negative, neutral, 1 positive (Shown) and 2 positive, important battery indicator, but no exponential, no dual rate, no adjustable direction or throw, no combination switches or mixers, just like playing a violin.
The antenna connector is a fat steel bolt and the case is 1,5 mm thick aluminum, not look-a-like. "

I am honestly impressed that you made your own transmitter although you did need to clean it up for it's photograph :-) I made my first single channel transmitter (ground based tube with a 6 volt car battery and inverter for power) and receiver (a home made copy of Krafts single channel converted to relayless) and all the time I wished I had enough money to just buy one. In the early days of reeds my brother (and to a very small extent, me) packaged 10 channel reed relayless drivers into very small servos cases and I can appreciate the work you must have done on your systems. What you did is not a trivial thing to do.

Who was the man with the beard apparently flying it? I assume it was you.

As far as being simple and having functions go, the JR has all of those things and more but you don't have to use them if you don't wish to. I don't play any musical instruments so maybe that allows me to enjoy the extra features of the JR that much better. It has triple rate on the main controls - a feature all of my airplanes are set up to use. For airplanes that are set up to do high maneuverability 3D maneuvers exponential is awfully nice. Now that I have tried it I would hate to do without it. Switches and mixers are there if I want them but I don't have to use them.

I tend to look at the JR with all of it's features like a modern race car and it's driver They did away with having a clutch and just let the driver use paddles on the steering wheel. There is a rev limiter so he won't blow up the motor. There is a super exotic suspension system to let it handle corners, and so on. All of that "stuff" lets the driver drive to his full potential, not hold him back.

I guess it all depends on what you want your radio to do for you, I want mine to ease the pilot workload in flight and I am willing to use a pre-flight check list to do it.

Again I am impressed with the radio, but do give it a bath so it looks better!

Ben