[1bwana1]

I'm not sure how this issue with the Futaba 2.4 system will play out, but it seems that most of the discussion back and forth is taking place due to the long silence on Futaba's part. Personally, I hope that Futaba either comes out with a fix, or recommended installation guidelines soon. It is in all of our interests that the Futaba system be robust, and widely adopted. This was made clear today at my local club's annual Spring Fling fly-in today. The club is very serious about safety, and so was impounding all radios, including 2.4 systems. Due to a mix up in impound (AMA card being placed in the wrong slot by impound workers), two pilots with the same 72MHz channels were given their radios and allowed to fly at the same time. Of course when the second pilot turned on, the first plane was shot down. Luckily, the shot down pilot was flying a foamy, but the second pilot was about to take off with a 35% plane. No one was hurt, the foamy was easily repaired, so we were very lucky. Out of curiosity, I took a quick survey of the radios being checked in. About two thirds of the fliers were on 2.4. Of these all but two were on Spektrum/JR, 1 on Futaba, and 1 on XPS. I spoke to the two pilots involved in the frequency conflict. Both were on Futaba 72 MHz radios. Both said that they wanted to go 2.4, but wanted to use a Futaba radio, and because of things they were reading about the system, they were not comfortable that the Futaba system was ready yet.

My point is, that brand wars aside, it is in all of our interests that the Futaba 2.4 system gets the bugs worked out. We will all be safer in the long run when frequency conflicts are a thing of the past.