In Need Of Your Opinion On These Receivers

[BATTLEAXE]

@BATTLEAXE I know you had issues before with the genuine Spektrum receivers, but I have three, and they are fantastic IMHO. No broken wires to worry about! Oh, yeah, no forgetting those pesky bind plugs either.

I know, I have had 3 AR620's myself and had nothing but issues, 3 in a row. Just not going there again. Actually it bites my a$$ that you have had zero issues with them seeing you hap-hazardly stuff them in your plane and all is good all the time. I wish I had your problems

 

[BATTLEAXE]

So given there are two people just in the past couple of hours have said good things about the Storm 603, and i just read 12 pages of reviews with nothing but 5 star ratings, and they ship from Canada, I am going to order a couple of them. Crossing my fingers and hope they work.

Thanks for your help guys

 

[The Hangar]

I know, I have had 3 AR620's myself and had nothing but issues, 3 in a row. Just not going there again. Actually it bites my a$$ that you have had zero issues with them seeing you hap-hazardly stuff them in your plane and all is good all the time. I wish I had your problems

Haha - makes me not-so-useful for threads like this...

 

[BATTLEAXE]

Haha - makes me not-so-useful for threads like this...

It's hard to say what you get at the LHS, especially here in Canada. You get new tech but you don't know if the Yanks are sending us their off runs just to get it to market. I have seen this in other vocational avenues being that I was in marketing myself, working for an American parent company. Stuff would be out in the states for two to three years before it gets brought up into Canada and usually is the left over scraps they don't want anymore.

A lot of the reviews that I read on the storm says it works just as good if not better then Spektrum OEM gear. so what do I have to lose but a few planes right?!

 

[CarolineTyler]

The iRange I have had good success with, also the Lemon receivers seem pretty reliable. Orange receivers, well the two planes that decided to failsafe on me were both using an Orange receiver. Not a huge sample set but enough to make me not want to use Orange receivers

 

[BATTLEAXE]

The iRange I have had good success with, also the Lemon receivers seem pretty reliable. Orange receivers, well the two planes that decided to failsafe on me were both using an Orange receiver. Not a huge sample set but enough to make me not want to use Orange receivers

I have heard this of the Orange brand, same with the Lemons as well. My lemons have failed in less then half a year, actually they started failing long before that so I am not going with those anymore.

I never heard of iRange before so yea thanks for the info on those

 

[sumone]

I like the iRangeX RM601 receivers and use them in many of my flying wings (Antenna always exposed )
and have not had any issues. (flying LOS and taken out as far as i can with out loosing orientation ).

I did buy 2 storm receivers and had them both fail in flight and during range check.
Might have just been a bad batch as a lot of people seem to like them.

 

[Hondo76251]

@BATTLEAXE I've yet to put that zohd autopilot into anything yet but it's on my shelf and it's quite small. I've seen lots of good things about them. I plan to try it in my next sub 250 build...

As far as receivers, it seems to me, you do take a little risk buying on the cheaper end but to me the trade off is worth it. I've had good luck with all of them honestly, even orange, but I also dont put them in my "higher end" builds because any product that cheap is bound to have little to no QA and is obviously assembled as cheaply as possible...

 

[Wildthing]

Do you have a link for it

I think this is the same Storm RX through ebay out of China of course but says free shipping also.

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/RC-Storm-S6...217277?hash=item420ce5a1bd:g:a68AAOSwcaZd1027

 

[sprzout]

So...here's my experiences with the receivers; take it with a grain of salt.

Orange - I've had middling success with them. Their early, DSM2 receivers, I had problems with. They would cut in and out constantly on me, or I'd get jittering servos doing range checks. I figured they were just cheaply made (and considering I'd gotten them for $5/receiver from an HK closeout), and just moved on to the DSMX ones. The DSMX versions I've flown with much better success - in fact, I've got one that's been through a couple of crashes via Combat, and the case blew off in one impact, leaving it as a naked receiver. No issues whatsoever there with that one.

Lemon - I've been running it in my Nano Goblin since day one, a 6 channel receiver that ran me about $15 when I bought it from ReadyMade RC a few years ago, and it's been going strong. I'm fairly impressed with it, having flown the plane several hundred feet away from me and having it stay rock solid the entire time.

Spektrum - I had ONE problem with any of my Spektrum receivers, and I don't blame Spektrum at all for it. The receiver I had an issue with was in my quadcopter, and was a satellite receiver that hooked into the FC. I had crashed and broke some props, and snapped the antenna mounts in the crash. I didn't think too much of the antennas, because they didn't look damaged, but when I started flying again, I had loss of control while flying and it went down after about 50-60 ft out from me. When I recovered the quad from the 2nd crash, I noticed that one of the antenna wires had actually been cut and damaged from the initial crash, and most likely was causing poor reception. I bought some new antenna wires, popped open the case, swapped them out, and put it back together; quad instantly had better reception.

I've recently bought 2 of the antenna-less 4 channel Spektrum receivers with the Bind button on it, and they've been rock solid for me - one in a balsa Gentle Lady that I've been sloping with, and one in a Baby Blender, which has yet to maiden (I was planning to test it this weekend, but when trying to take off, I had a sputter on the motor and lost power as it was taxiing the runway for takeoff - looks like one of the mounting screws I had was a little longer than the others and did some damage to the winding inside, so it wasn't getting full power. Swapped out for a new motor when I got it home and she'll be ready for testing this coming weekend, hopefully!)

 

[BATTLEAXE]

@BATTLEAXE I've yet to put that zohd autopilot into anything yet but it's on my shelf and it's quite small. I've seen lots of good things about them. I plan to try it in my next sub 250 build...

As far as receivers, it seems to me, you do take a little risk buying on the cheaper end but to me the trade off is worth it. I've had good luck with all of them honestly, even orange, but I also dont put them in my "higher end" builds because any product that cheap is bound to have little to no QA and is obviously assembled as cheaply as possible...

The three AR620's that I have had in the past are $50 a piece and I had issues with them as well, so price sometimes doesn't always mean you are guaranteed quality assurance. Which is to bad, I was hoping those would have been next to flawless considering they are Spektrum OEM

 

[Bricks]

I know, I have had 3 AR620's myself and had nothing but issues, 3 in a row. Just not going there again. Actually it bites my a$$ that you have had zero issues with them seeing you hap-hazardly stuff them in your plane and all is good all the time. I wish I had your problems

Are you sure they were true Spektrum receivers there are so many knockoffs that look exactly like Spektrum it is hard to tell if you do not buy from Spektrum. I see on on some of the foreghin websites claimng to sell Spektrum AR636 AS3X receivers,which you know they are not. I have had excellent results with Lemons and the newer Gen 2 Orange receivers the Gen 1`s were garbage.

 

[BATTLEAXE]

Are you sure they were true Spektrum receivers

I bought them from the LHS in Spektrum packaging with Spektrum manuals sold with my Spektrum Tx, so I can't say it is a knock off, I would have to trust the LHS is selling genuine product or they wouldn't be in business, but you do make a good point. That is something to watch for definitely, especially getting stuff online.

Gen 2 Orange receivers the Gen 1`s were garbage.

I did not know there are 2 generations of the Orange Rx's. I heard a lot of bad things from the Orange camp, but I have also heard these of the Lemons as well. Now that I have had two Lemons both quit at roughly the same time, just kind of confirms that. Do you have any good links to the Orange Rx's you speak of?

 

[sprzout]

Are you sure they were true Spektrum receivers there are so many knockoffs that look exactly like Spektrum it is hard to tell if you do not buy from Spektrum. I see on on some of the foreghin websites claimng to sell Spektrum AR636 AS3X receivers,which you know they are not. I have had excellent results with Lemons and the newer Gen 2 Orange receivers the Gen 1`s were garbage.

That's been my experience with the Orange Receivers as well. I've not had any issues with the actual Spektrum receivers that I've bought from my LHS, whether it was the older AR400 with the top mount connectors, or the newer AR410 front mounted receivers. I know that there's been concerns with the newer antenna-less receivers that Spektrum makes, like the AR410 or AR620, but that's been primarily with people who use it in the carbon fiber fuselage planes like a DLG glider - carbon fiber tends to block the reception.

 

[BATTLEAXE]

That's been my experience with the Orange Receivers as well. I've not had any issues with the actual Spektrum receivers that I've bought from my LHS, whether it was the older AR400 with the top mount connectors, or the newer AR410 front mounted receivers. I know that there's been concerns with the newer antenna-less receivers that Spektrum makes, like the AR410 or AR620, but that's been primarily with people who use it in the carbon fiber fuselage planes like a DLG glider - carbon fiber tends to block the reception.

The only way I could get mine to work with any kind of consistency was to mount them on the outside of the plane. The Lemons I was able mount on the inside as long as the antenna's poked out of the fuse most of the time.

 

[sprzout]

The only way I could get mine to work with any kind of consistency was to mount them on the outside of the plane. The Lemons I was able mount on the inside as long as the antenna's poked out of the fuse most of the time.

Yup, that's typical with carbon fiber, and why the DLG guys aren't liking the new sport receivers, even though they're smaller than some of the 6-9 channel receivers with telemetry. Me, I'll buy one and range test it; if it doesn't work with carbon fiber, well, I've got a receiver for a foamie, then.

 

[BATTLEAXE]

Yup, that's typical with carbon fiber, and why the DLG guys aren't liking the new sport receivers, even though they're smaller than some of the 6-9 channel receivers with telemetry. Me, I'll buy one and range test it; if it doesn't work with carbon fiber, well, I've got a receiver for a foamie, then.

Yea but it has only been up until recently that I have used CF at all. And with the CF I make sure that the receiver is at least 3-4" away from any CF spar

 

[Wildthing]

Yea but it has only been up until recently that I have used CF at all. And with the CF I make sure that the receiver is at least 3-4" away from any CF spar

I don't think that odd little cf spar is the problem, I have cf rods and strips all through most of my planes because they are mainly made with 6mm MPF not FB.

 

[sprzout]

I don't think that odd little cf spar is the problem, I have cf rods and strips all through most of my planes because they are mainly made with 6mm MPF not FB.

Agreed - there's something else going on that's causing drops. A CF spar wouldn't cause it, but the receiver being surrounded by CF would. The way that many of the DLG/glider folks are getting around it now is that they do a hybrid - they'll run a CF fuselage up to a specific point, then you mount all of your electronics on a platform (usually something like birch plywood) and encase it with a fiberglass or ABS nose cone. That allows signal to be received without interference.

 

[Wildthing]

Agreed - there's something else going on that's causing drops. A CF spar wouldn't cause it, but the receiver being surrounded by CF would. The way that many of the DLG/glider folks are getting around it now is that they do a hybrid - they'll run a CF fuselage up to a specific point, then you mount all of your electronics on a platform (usually something like birch plywood) and encase it with a fiberglass or ABS nose cone. That allows signal to be received without interference.

Most of these planes have limited cf in them , now with the more popular 3D printing which is in more of the builds I think I have run into a few issues where the plastic is disrupting the signal. I am one of the 3D printer dudes
I think with the more punishment you put the rx's through it seems to affect them such as crashes or combat wars and things start to fail.