A friend of mine has an old plane he is thinking of fixing up and learning to fly. He has an opportunity to buy a Futaba 6XAS radio for $20. We're wondering if that radio can be buddy boxed to my Futaba 6EXA radio. Is this possible or do we need to find an official "buddy box"?

Thanks!
John

It can be used as the buddy box. Does it take the same plug in for the trainer cord? Some were round and some were micro. Either way the cords are available.

Not sure about the 6XAS, but mine takes the square plug. His would be older so I'm thinking it's probably the round one.

They make the cords to go from square to round also. Or, square to square, round to round.

they make cords that have the round on one end and the micro on the other

6XAS uses the round plug. Here is the cord you'll need http://www.gpdealera.com/cgi-bin/wga...pgm?I=FUTM4420

Awesome. Thanks alot for the replies. I look forward to having a good flying buddy finally.

I forgot to mention, you should be able to use the programming functions of the 6XAS if you want. I have a 6XAS as a buddy box.

I like to have exponential on my controls. My brother (instructor) does not. He has the master transmitter set the way he likes it and I make adjustments on my end.

When I fly his planes I usually use dual rates to cut the control throws down some.

Getting your friend started you may not want to do any programming other than what is required to make the controls the same for teacher and student, but it is nice to have the ability to do other things.

This may not be the best place to start this, but I'm of the firm belief that we miss something very important in initial training.Up and down are ingrained spacial relationships that refer to sky and earth or against and with the force of gravity for almost everyone, and yet we say up and down when refering to direction of control of an r/c plane.
The attitude of an inverted aircraft is counter to the mind's idea of up and down and often results in momentary loss of control and sometimes loss of aircraft.
I think it is very important to call the righ stick commands CANOPY, not UP, and Gear, not Down as this lets the mind translate what the eye sees to the hand with out spacial translation. You try it and see if it makes the comand more automatic for you. Any comments?

mok

I think that's a great idea. It took me a minute to figure out what you were saying but it makes perfect sense. I always thought of it as "push" and "pull" but I'll give the canopy and gear a shot the next time I'm out. I don't fly much inverted because of the fear of nosediving into the ground.

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One mistake that has caused more inverted crashes than anything else is "pulling up" when a pilot gets in trouble. I've done it myself as well. When you are inverted you need to constantly remind yourself "roll out of trouble". You should make it a habit to always exit inverted flight be rolling out. If you make it a habit to use the elevator to exit then when you get in trouble the first instinct will be to pull back on that elevator. train yourself to not do that

Ken</p>