Radio transmitters
The radio transmitters are essential part of the RC hobby – it’s the thing you hold in your hands to steer your aircraft. They could also be the most expensive part of the hobby, if you let them. Yeah, but not me, I’m on the cheap(er) side of the spectrum with everything.
The first RC transmitter I got was the one which came with my first plane as a part of beginners kit, and it’s Cadet 4 by Pelikan Daniel – simple 4 channel transmitter, which has the 5th channel available but not accessible when bought. It has just few switches – for individual channel inversion, plus channel mixer for delta wing or V-tail of a plane (or just off). The PPM signal can be found on the PCB inside, so you can use it with RC simulator on PC, if you export that PPM signal to some new connector on the case of the transmitter.
The 2nd transmitter I got was Spektrum DXe – it’s cheaper than other Spektrum transmitters as it lacks display for configuration of models and parameters, but it can be configured from PC via USB cable or from Android phone. So I bought it, then bought the USB cable for that (30 Euro), installed the PC app and found out, that the features I wanted to use were either future TODO features, or accessible only on the Android app. So I had to buy the Android connection cable (another 30 Euro), found out that I need to update the transmitter firmware, did the update and found out, that now the PC app doesn’t work with the transmitter anymore and I’m stuck with the Android app. Yeah, so I could just put away the USB cable for good as it was useless since then. And further Android app updates didn’t arrive within the year I got the receiver, and still some promised features were missing from the Android app, so I decided to ditch this transmitter…
So the last one I got was FrSky Taranis Q X7, which has a large display for all the parameters configuration without a need for additional expensive cables. Plus the receivers are half of the price compared to Spektrum. Ordinary USB cable is used for connecting it to PC for updates or configuration, but also to act as a USB joystick for usage with simulators. This is my current transmitter which I use for everything, even with the trainer glider (my current FPV platform).
