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ploots

Transmitter and receiver

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Hi all

I'm looking for a new transmitter and receivers,my current one is a Carson pistol grip but I'm finding it difficult to get receivers now so thought I'd get a new one with Xmas coming up,I've got a couple of cars to build and hopefully might get a couple next year 

I'm looking for something not to expensive that has endless supplies of receivers, I was looking at flysky as seems fairly cheap, what do you use and recommend 

Thanks for any help

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Wheel or stick?  If you want to stay with a wheel, then the FlySky GT5 is cheap, well-specced and receivers are easy to get.  However mine didn't last long before the throttle pot wore out, and it's such a bizarre size that I've never been able to find a replacement, meaning the controller is junk for want of an easily-replaced part that should cost less than £2 if only I could find one.  So for me, it would be hard to recommend.  There are newer wheel options from FlySky, but I can't say if they'll have the same throttle pot problem or if they use the same cheap receivers.

I've had good results with the FlySky FS-i6 stick transmitter, available in various flavours.  I've got a two of these and will probably buy another when I run out of model slots (probably rather soon!)  They're a 6-channel aircraft radio and a bit quirky to operate but they work well for bashing and receivers are cheap (you can use the same receivers with the GT5 but you can't always use the GT5 receivers with the i6 because of the inbuilt gyro which sometimes enables itself during binding to the i6 and can't be turned off without the GT5 transmitter).  Anyhoo, I really like these radios and they are cheap as they come, mine has been robust, dropped hard several times, totally drenched in a British downpour so hard that it stopped working, but we opened it up, left it to try over the van's aircon vents and it worked fine an hour later.  It developed some corrosion after that which locked one of the trim buttons, but 20 minutes dismantling and cleaning had it working fine again.

Because it's an aircraft radio, one of the vertical axis will be a ratchet.  Ideally you want a Mode 1 radio, this has the ratchet on the right vertical axis.  There are parts available online to convert it to a regular spring.  I use my right channel for winching on my crawlers and trailer functions on my big rigs.

Like I say it's a bit quirky, it has lots of aircraft-specific functions that you can trick into using for car stuff, once you take time to figure it out.

At the other end of the spectrum (see what I did there?) last year I bought a Sanwa MT-5, which is a wheel radio in a different league.  From now on, it'll be the only radio I use when racing - neither my Spektrum DS-3C, GT5 or FS-i6 can compete when it comes to ease of use, race-ready functions and general accuracy of control.  That said, I could buy an FS-i6 and a handful of receivers for the price of one Sanwa receiver, so it's not a budget-friendly option if you want to upgrade all your cars at once.

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39 minutes ago, ploots said:

Hi all

I'm looking for a new transmitter and receivers,my current one is a Carson pistol grip but I'm finding it difficult to get receivers now so thought I'd get a new one with Xmas coming up,I've got a couple of cars to build and hopefully might get a couple next year 

I'm looking for something not to expensive that has endless supplies of receivers, I was looking at flysky as seems fairly cheap, what do you use and recommend 

Thanks for any help

I will not recommend Carson (I have two, the wheel and the stick ones) as their RX are around £25 a pop. I also have a Absima CR3P (effectively a Flysky GT3) which is cheap at £60 TX + 2 RX. The RX are cheap at £8 a pop from Aliexpress. It is rather cheap feeling though, if that is a problem. Recently, it started playing up so I got a Flysky GT5, £50 odd with a RX with gyro built in. Feels better built than a CR3P/GT3. Non gyro RX are available at similar price as the GT3 ones. 

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My sons got the CR3P which seems ok ish I'll have a look at the GT5 thank you

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20 minutes ago, Mad Ax said:

Wheel or stick?  If you want to stay with a wheel, then the FlySky GT5 is cheap, well-specced and receivers are easy to get.  However mine didn't last long before the throttle pot wore out, and it's such a bizarre size that I've never been able to find a replacement, meaning the controller is junk for want of an easily-replaced part that should cost less than £2 if only I could find one.  So for me, it would be hard to recommend.  There are newer wheel options from FlySky, but I can't say if they'll have the same throttle pot problem or if they use the same cheap receivers.

I've had good results with the FlySky FS-i6 stick transmitter, available in various flavours.  I've got a two of these and will probably buy another when I run out of model slots (probably rather soon!)  They're a 6-channel aircraft radio and a bit quirky to operate but they work well for bashing and receivers are cheap (you can use the same receivers with the GT5 but you can't always use the GT5 receivers with the i6 because of the inbuilt gyro which sometimes enables itself during binding to the i6 and can't be turned off without the GT5 transmitter).  Anyhoo, I really like these radios and they are cheap as they come, mine has been robust, dropped hard several times, totally drenched in a British downpour so hard that it stopped working, but we opened it up, left it to try over the van's aircon vents and it worked fine an hour later.  It developed some corrosion after that which locked one of the trim buttons, but 20 minutes dismantling and cleaning had it working fine again.

Because it's an aircraft radio, one of the vertical axis will be a ratchet.  Ideally you want a Mode 1 radio, this has the ratchet on the right vertical axis.  There are parts available online to convert it to a regular spring.  I use my right channel for winching on my crawlers and trailer functions on my big rigs.

Like I say it's a bit quirky, it has lots of aircraft-specific functions that you can trick into using for car stuff, once you take time to figure it out.

At the other end of the spectrum (see what I did there?) last year I bought a Sanwa MT-5, which is a wheel radio in a different league.  From now on, it'll be the only radio I use when racing - neither my Spektrum DS-3C, GT5 or FS-i6 can compete when it comes to ease of use, race-ready functions and general accuracy of control.  That said, I could buy an FS-i6 and a handful of receivers for the price of one Sanwa receiver, so it's not a budget-friendly option if you want to upgrade all your cars at once.

Flysky sells replacement parts on their website. Maybe you can find a fix there.

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I picked up a FlySky gt3 a few months back and I’ve been enjoying modifying it…

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To be honest I'd prefer stick rather than wheel as I started RC back in the 80s,I'm putting up with wheel but I know what I'd prefer 

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7 minutes ago, ploots said:

To be honest I'd prefer stick rather than wheel as I started RC back in the 80s,I'm putting up with wheel but I know what I'd prefer 

If you prefer stick, Carson is the only one (for surface) that I know of. The rest are either for air or too simple with no memory or even EPA adjustments. 

If wheel, there are a few more from Aliexpress you can consider, Radiolink and Turbo Racing. I do not own a Radiolink but the comments here from owners are good. I have the "kids size" Turbo Racing one (cannot remember the model) and liked it so much that I bought a second one. Their RX can be bought with gyro built in. Adult sizes available too. 

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An option worth looking at IMO is the fs-t6, getting both sticks to be self centering, rather than having one ratchet is a really easy mod, ive done it on the one i have.

It gets you six channels, four on the sticks and two that can be assigned to switches or turny knobs as well as model memory, end points, expo and lots of that sorta jazz.

Ive not opened my flysky th9x or looked into other flysky stick radios but ill still guess that doing the same mod on any of them will probably be similar.

 

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2 hours ago, alvinlwh said:

4 x AAs

Cheers, the specs I saw a while back must have been wrong :D

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I will throw in another vote for Flysky, mine have been great. Cheap receivers, easy to use once you figure out that the instructions don't help at all, and 4AAs in the Tx. Pretty solid receivers, too. One of my receivers, which is NOT waterproof, was dunked in a puddle and just stopped working while driving back to me. Turned it off, dried it out for a few days, plugged it all back in, and to my surprise it fired right back up with no indication anything was ever wrong.

I've had an FS-i4 Tx (the cheapest, simplest model) for about 2 years now, and it has been rock solid except one of the pots went bad. However, it's really trivial to just swap the whole sticks from left to right and vice versa, and I only use 2 channels for most of my cars anyway. The spring return typically comes installed on the right side, so I was going to switch them anyway to have spring return on the left.

In practice, I actually don't mind that the right steering stick doesn't have a spring return. It's more comfortable for me if it's dropped down low anyway, and you can tighten the screws on the metal strap to keep the stick in place more solidly.

The i4 has been such a good unit that I've recently gone for the FS-i6X as well, which has been a fantastic radio so far. All the switches and knobs I could ever need, enough memory for 20 models, and more adjustments than I will ever be able to take advantage of! I even sprung for the version with the upgraded firmware and 10chan Rx, and it was barely more than two pairs of tires! Highly recommend!

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17 hours ago, Frog Jumper said:

Flysky sells replacement parts on their website. Maybe you can find a fix there.

Thank you!  I've spent ages looking for spares (since 2019, I think) and not found any, a quick browse through the FlySky online shop and a replacement pot and lever assembly has been ordered.  I don't know why I couldn't find this years ago!

So far I've spent around a third the cost of a replacement transmitter on discrete components from Aliexpress which have turned out to be wrong.

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3 hours ago, Mad Ax said:

  I don't know why I couldn't find this years ago!

It could be because it took them years to realise that there is a problem, and a demand for replacement parts. 

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19 minutes ago, alvinlwh said:

It could be because it took them years to realise that there is a problem, and a demand for replacement parts. 

Glad it worked out!

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