Must be old news but what' going on with JR?
 

I just obtained an XG8 and after a little getting used to have decided I rather like it. Now I see that JR has discontinued it. I don't need an 11 channel XG11 or the expense and the additional channels and mixing of the 8 is just right for me over the 6. What are the particular reasons the 8 was it was discontinued?
thanks
John

John,

Where did you see the XG8 as discontinued? JR is restructuring. In the US, it is no longer being distributed by Horizon Hobby. JR Americas is the sole distributor of JR products. On their website the XG8 is still available.

Allan

thanks Alan
Horizon was where it said discontinued. Also it appears that it is the Silver face XG8 which is discontinued on JRAmericas. After looking further the XG8 Black version is now the current model available. Love the radio but not the 1400mah battery. Was hoping they could upgrade the internal charge circuit to work with a larger capacity LiPo. These are currently available from an aftermarket vendor made with 3400mah Panasonic cells but must be charged with an external charger. Not a deal breaker but ya know would be nice.

John

..

I hope the restructuring goes smoothly, I am a big fan of all the newer DMSS stuff as it is flawlessly engineered and bulletproof in operation. Waiting for receivers to come back I to stock in the US.

I read the News report on the JR website (Announcement (Official Post and private communication) | Japan Remote Control CO.,Ltd) but does anyone know when they intend to get back to producing RC Hobby equipment?

Thanks.

I just ordered a JR DMSS receiver and NX servos from JR America.
All the transmitters XG6, XG8, XG14, and 28X, and most receivers seem to be in stock.
Horizon appears to be no longer getting new JR stuff. So when I see "discontinued"
on the Horizon site I assume it means Horizon is no longer selling it, not that it
necessarily means the item is no longer manufactured.

Good morning guys,

There's an announcement at JR America's website about distribution and service of JR products which is self expanatory:

JR Americas

JR's announcements are from last year, it certainly would be good to get an update.

What I've gathered is that Horizon is no longer JR's main distributor. JR has moved their manufacturing to Malaysia and will handle all their own U.S. marketing and service via JR Americas. My LHS is still able to obtain any of their products without Horizon as the middle man. This was all a little scary as I've been a faithful JR user for 30+ years. Without the middle man the LHS may be able to offer slightly better prices which is a good thing. Now, if the darn wind and rain would stop here in NW NC I'm ready to do some flying.

Without the middle man?
What function is it that you think JR Americas is performing?

Horizon was the importer/distributor for JR in the USA for some time. When the 2.4GHz revolution started happening, Horizon created Spektrum and formed a joint venture agreement with JR where JR provided the cases/parts for the Spektrum radios and Spektrum allowed JR to use the Spektrum 2.4 format RF sections for their upper channel radios which at the time was only the XP9303.

At the end of the initial contract period, JR and Horizon were unable to come to an agreement on continuing the releationship. There are LOTS of rumors about what happened but basically JR Americas was formed to be the new importer/distributor for JR in the USA. One big problem; they had NO service facilities or techs, they were just a hobby shop with a new name. So another deal was struck to have Horizon continue to service the JR radios and they became a dealer not the importer/distributor.

Long story a bit shorter; JR has entered the commercial drone marketplace and consumer RC products are no longer a priority. At a recent marketing event for that new company, Len Sabato the owner of Advantage Hobby/JR Americas, was photographed at the event wearing a jacket from the new JR company.

There is a big thread, or several actually, over on FG with rumors, facts and pictures. Hard to say if JR is really going back into the consumer RC business but with the price of their radios vs. the new open source stuff, I do not think they can make it again.

I say all of this as a former JR user who was really quite ticked off (a polite term for my actual feelings) about JR just abandoning those of use who had a real chunk of change invested in their radios with the Spektrum RF decks. I personally still have two JR 12X radios and quite a few rx's with the Spektrum RF components and those guys just dropped us all on our heads. 'Ain't 'gonna be no more JR for me and hasn't been for about three years now.

And the saga continues.... I too have been buying JR stuff for years.

Where are the discussions over on FG located ? If am not familiar with that reference. Interested to see about the future of JR.

Pretty much the way I understand things to be too, There is also a rumor that JR has turned the RC part of their business over to another company but we don’t have a confirmations on that but we do know that JR
moved the manufacturing of their RC products out of Japan and was why there was a period of time when many JR products were unavailable. IMO the JR Spectrum relation really harmed JR to point it will be difficult to recover and
that is likely one of the reasons why there was restructuring at JR. The early Spektrum loss of control issues along with Horizon not carrying the entire JR line caused many customers to move away from JR and that was not good for JR.

What is the "FG" site where this is dicusssed?

FG is Flying Giants and they have a search you can use to find it.

Thanks.

it's not, it's on the web site

Guys, I'm chasing dmss receiver JR113BPU. Has anybody still got them?

The RG1131PBU receiver is discontinued. It seems that JR now only make 6 and 8 channel receivers, with X-bus.
That RG1131BPU receiver has 11 channels and two power inputs.
In my opinion using Xbus is better than trying to use a receiver with lots of channels.
You probably don't really need 11 channels with Xbus because each channel function
(eg Aileron) can drive up to four servos. You could use either a 6 channel or 8 channel JR receiver with X-bus
and the limit is the number of channels on transmitter not receiver.
I found Xbus is very convenient and try to use it in all my models. You can use JR NX- type servos or
conventional PWM servos with a JR decoder.

With regard to the two separate power inputs on the RG1131BPU if that is an important feature
you are out of luck as that is not included on current JR receivers. If you want battery redundency
you may consider getting the 'XB2-CHB' hub.

Thanks bjw for the clarification. I'm building 1/3 Taylorcraft using my high power servos 8 all together. I have xg14 transmitter. I have never used xbus before. For some reason, I was never a big fan of power boxes and always had my set ups as simple as I could make them. Yes, I do like using two batteries. Need to study a bit that XB2-CHB device you mention.