[1bwana1]

Now that the JR-9303 2.4 radio systems are shipping, I thought we should have a thread to share our experiences and setups. I have heard that they are already sold out of them, so there should be a lot of you out there that have them. I have been flying 2.4 on my small planes for about a year now, but have been using my 9303 PCM in my giant scale planes. I am a big fan of the 9303 because of it's features, programming, and feel, so I have been anxiously awaiting this release. I'll start the thread with a brief report.

A friend of mine received his 9303 2.4 this week. He decided to install it in an older 42% Radio Craft Extra 330LX as a test bed, because, he says that plane owes him nothing at this point, and he won't feel too bad if he losses it. This is a large heavy (43lb +) plane, with a DA-150, a 30 X 12 CF prop, and both smoke and gas tanks. I believe he said that the plane has 18 digital servos. This is a challenging environment for any radio system, so it makes a good test bed. Having some experience with 2.4 systems, I was very skeptical when I saw the installation. Basically, he had just removed his old PCM RX and replaced it with the JR-921 2.4 RX that came with his radio. The main RX was buried deep in the fuse, and in contact with a lot of wires. The satellite RX was mounted close by, and up a little. In a plane of this size I would have added an additional satellite RX as high up in the canopy area as possible to maximize diversity. The system is powered by two 4800 Fromeco LiOn batteries, two switches, two regulators set at 6 volts, with each regulator having it's own lead into the RX. I warned him that this was a pretty crude install, and I was a bit concerned. He wanted to continue any way, so we did.

We tethered the plane, started the motor, and he went about 200' away with the range test button pressed with a perfect solid connection. I then untethered the plane and began to rotate it about 10 degrees and tested again. Sure enough there came a point in the rotation that the RX were blocked by the motor, prop, and fuel tanks, that we lost connection. We noticed that he had the antenna pointed straight at the plane, which put the plane directly in the antenna null. Once we re-orientated the antenna we had a solid connection at all angles on the plane. We had a good range check at about double the recommended distance so we decided to fly it.

We flew the plane 3 flights with great results. We loaded the servos as much as possible, we flew far away and very high, we flew low a hard. The system worked perfectly. We asked each other if we noticed the rumoured higher response rates. Since this isn't a plane that is flown often we could not be sure. However we both agreed that we did feel very locked in and the plane flew perfect, and we agreed that it had a smoothness that we didn't notice with the old radio system.

My friend has decided he has enough confidence at this point to do the next test in one of his "first line" planes next. He will take the precaution of using a power expander to ensure that the voltage to the RX stays above the re-boot level, he will also install one additional satellite RX, and the data logger so he can optimize placement of the RXs.

All in all, a very good result. I hope it all works out to be as solid a system as it is advertised to be. If it does I will have one soon myself.

Let's hear your results.

-STEVE-