This particular topic has the potential to raise a real S$#% storm. There are those who will claim that they have never had an issue and they will claim ranges that are almost incredible and there will be those warning of the dangers of having the receiving device among all the wires and electronics inside you plane and the fact that such a location will block radio signals and reduce the operating range.
Locally our club has only had one member try to use one of the new antenna-less receivers in one of his planes.
it passed the range checks and it all seemed to function quite well on the ground.
On the maiden the bird taxied out and took off as you would expect. He managed to do around three circuits before he decided to bring the bird in for some adjustments. So the last circuit was long to give adequate distance to slow down and land . That is when all hell broke loose.
As the bird was turned onto final it just kept turning until control returned and the owner tried to turn it back onto final and the same thing happened yet again. After about 4 attempts to get it to follow the glide slope he just decided to put it down anywhere he could and that he managed to do. About 250 metres away from the landing strip.
It seems that he was losing signal and quite often.
No one else at our club, (about 50 members), uses the antenna-less Receivers and will not risk their planes on them, (regardless of price).
Of the 50 members around 60% are Spektrum users and they have basically abandoned the cheap receivers on anything requiring reliable communications over a reasonable range.
Our club used to have the occasional "Fly Away" or unexplained Control difficulties, (also sometimes called interference). Unfortunately the vast majority were Spektrum users trying to save money by using cheap knockoff receivers or those with extremely short "Pigtail" antennas.
It took a while to get the message through that a decent receiver costs more than the cheap ones FOR A VALID REASON!
The club has only had a single LOS event and ZERO "FLY AWAYS" in the last 6 months and the LOS was caused by someone who thought that a single maiden flight on an old receiver that had provided many hours of flight without a single issue would suffice. I almost cost him his plane! He sold the Receiver to someone on the internet
and bought a more expensive and better suited Spektrum receiver.
You can evaluate is performance and range for yourself but I do NOT recommend the antenna-less receivers because to me they are designed for shorter range use or even quad usage. The requirements for a fixed wing RC model aircraft are different to those of a quadcopter and most planes do not yet have flight stabilisation with "Return to Home", though it is something we are adding to our fixed wing models gradually before the government legislates their use, (especially for those who are being supported in their flying through instruction and other support).
Have fun!
