Radio Wars, Part 2

[Steve_B]

Yep, the orange seem fine to me too. i have one in my HK Slick and by flying buddy has a couple in his models and they have been faultless.

Regarding the Corsair.. Was that the Parkzone version?.. That would be the original one with the woefully inadequate linear BEC in the ESC, now upgraded in the latest version.. But obviously the fact is no one really knows what went wrong so it would be leaping to conclusions to blame any one component.

One thing I'm confused about on Futaba.. What's the score with S-FHSS, FHSS, FASST and FASTest (and maybe others i'm unaware of?) Seems like an unnecessary and confusing range of different spread spectrum technology to be running concurrently And no compatibility between the FHSS and FASST systems!.. So how do they justify that?

Are Futaba in a transition phase from FHSS to FASST (meaning that FHSS will be obsolete soon) .. If not why do they need two different technologies?

 

[Space Bat]

Steve - Futaba are going into S-FHSS - which is a S-Bus version on FHSS - this is a market move I guess to fill the void where lost sales are evident due to the higher cost of FASST and FASSTest...

I spoke to someone in the know and they say that Futaba are going to ditch the lower end FASST 8channel and below in favour of S-FHSS and the top end radio's such as the 14channel plus will be on the FASST/FASSTest

This will allow for cheaper radio sets to compete with the others in the market place for which they are losing market share due to the higher priced FASST/FASSTest systems...

 

[Steve_B]

Thanks for the explanation.
I'm still slightly curious on why they don't just settle on one 'best' technology (probably FASST / FASTest). It's hard to see why it would increase the cost significantly as it probably only boils down to a small difference in actual hardware. Or at least they could engineer the system to be cross compatible like Speky did with DSM2/DSMX. As it is anyone wanting to upgrade from FHSS to FASST systems would face having to replace not only their Tx but all their receivers.

 

[Manta]

Heheh i guess even control lines break every now and again.

 

[wedoitall]

i went with the dx8, if i dont like it ill sell it and try a futaba. but im sure itll be fine for my noobular skills. would like to run the 8000 rx's is that the only one they have thatll do 11ms? like to get something kinda light for my TH edge epp. all the other stuff is nice(telemetry, alarms, etc) but the reason i was looking to upgrade, something faster than the dx6i i have.

 

[gyro]

i went with the dx8, if i dont like it ill sell it and try a futaba. but im sure itll be fine for my noobular skills. would like to run the 8000 rx's is that the only one they have thatll do 11ms? like to get something kinda light for my TH edge epp. all the other stuff is nice(telemetry, alarms, etc) but the reason i was looking to upgrade, something faster than the dx6i i have.

Congrats! I've been loving my DX8 for a year now, and I think you made a great choice.
The 7610 is highspeed as well, but I don't think you'd notice the difference between the 11ms and 22ms on the TH Edge. For that airplane, any of the Spektrum park-flier receivers would be awesome. Keep in mind, if you don't have super fast digital servos, you can't use (and wouldn't notice) the high speed feature anyway.... and the DX8 is light years ahead of the DX6 (which I started with before the DX7, before the DX8)

-G

 

[Space Bat]

The FASST electonics are more expensive the chipsets are much more in price than the chipsets that can be used for FHSS/DSSS and DSM2/DSMX

You still see this cost as the clones can't even compete between chipsets and FASST clones are 3-5x more in price than other cloned RX's

 

[Steve_B]

I'm not so sure that the 'chip' itself will be so more expensive to make.. Seems to me like it may just be marketing strategy as in pricing to suit the intended market.

Clone manufacturers being in it for profit will also price their product at a price point that that is somewhat below the OEM product but not necessarily as low as they could go based on manufacturing cost. It's rather like processors for home PC's.. Many are actually physically identical but they deliberative 'hamstring' the lower end products and sell them cheap and only enable the full performance on the high end chips which they sell at premium price. The price of production is identical in all cases.

But truth is we don't really know for sure so it's all just speculation.

 

[Space Bat]

I was told directly that the cost of manufacture and the electronics and chipsets are more expensive in the FASST/FAASTest systems and that I can't see was a marketing explanation-I have no reason to doubt the Futaba people on this...

 

[Steve_B]

ok... probably me just being cynical, as per usual