Aerobatic Performance Team
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ARF Reviews
product Reviews
The Ladies
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Product Review-
Futaba 12Z Transmitter with R5014DPS Receiver
Product Review by "Rockin' Rick" Part 1
HI there! Futaba's new 12ZA radio is almost as good looking as Justina, so I'm going to have her help me out with this review. I purchased this radio in August of 2006 after a sequence of two then unexplained crashes involving my trusted Futaba 9CAP radio. To make a long story short, the 9CAP was to blame for my loss of a 25% and a 35% aircraft, not the builder or components in the airplanes themselves. Unfortunately, I didn't figure out that it was the radio that was at fault until after the second crash involving my Comp-ARF YAK 55SP. So now you ask, "How can the transmitter go bad"? Believe me folks, doo-doo occurs in this life and equipment wears out no matter what degree of care you have taken to ensure that it functions every time you take it out of the case. For what reason? Only the Almighty knows...because for how much we pay for the privilege to fly a model airplane, the stuff should last forever without ever having to be upgraded or replaced. Well, enough of that for now, I'll get on to the review. I got to admit, I was looking to see some of the familiar features of the 9CAP in this radio, and some similarities do exist. ATV, End Point, AFR, mixes and the usual suspects are all there for you. Some of the neater features not contained in the 9CAP were servo grouping, and the different model types with the types of wing formations and tail formations that you can easily plug in when starting the programming features for your individual aircraft. But that's not all that's new here.
There is a wealth of more user friendly mixing options and a host of fine tunable control options to be had with this transmitter. Look man, you paid for the Caddy, didn't you? I really liked the way that the mixing area is set up. The most commonly used set ups are already listed for you...rudder to elevator, rudder to aileron, elevator to aileron, just punch in the one you want and set it up! Don't forget to do you mixing on your planes at the field early in the morning where the wind factor is not prevalent. Trying to mix out bad characteristics under windy flying conditions is just as good as pissing into the wind. Neither one's gonna' work for you. Wait for the right wind conditions, do it then, and your rewards will be realized every time you fly the aircraft. An aircraft that is not trimmed or mixed correctly is as much fun to fly as a concrete block. While we're on that subject... I remember a while back, a club member asked me to help him. Said he was having trouble flying his plane and couldn't figure out what was making it so hard for him to fly. I mean, this guy had trouble when he took off, trouble when he was just circle jerking, and a real whale of trouble when he landed the plane. I said OK and got him to take the plane off and told him to pass me the transmitter once he had it trimmed for level flight. He takes it off, makes a couple of laps around the field and says he's ready and passes me the transmitter, plane at altitude about 100ft. That said, while the transmitter is being passed, the plane rolls and commences a steep leftward dive toward the deck at about 3/4 throttle. I recovered the plane as quickly as I could, but there was only about 4' of clearance between us and a hard place by that time. I got it back up to a safe 2-3 mistake altitude and started trimming the control surfaces. While trying to climb out of that near disaster, the plane wanted to dive and roll left. The ailerons were first, followed by the elevator, and then the rudder. This plane was so incredibly far out of trim I can't understand how he could have flown it. I asked him why he hadn't trimmed the airplane before he handed me the transmitter. His answer... Trimming, how do I do that? Surely boggles the mind, doesn't it?
Servo Grouping is a great plus on this radio as multiple servos can be driven in groups while still retaining their discrete individual linkage assignments. Hmmm...I guess my Hitec programmer is now officially up for sale. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that dead band width adjustment and reset to factory default are about the only functions not found on this radio compared to the capabilities of the Hitec HFP-10 Servo programmer. The Futaba custom processor lets pilot program in a intuitive interface, making use of advanced features such as the Servo Grouping, Servo speed and delay and much more. The 12Z's quad bearings on the gimbals offers the smoothest motion and response that a radio system can offer. Customization of the "feel" is made easy with the easy-assess stick tension and detent adjustments from the back of the 12Z. The switches on the radio can be interchanged very easily by the user to suit one's own preferences as to height, functionality, and locations.
You can keep your model information in the standard memory or store it on compact flash to preserve your valuable settings. I like putting my information on the compact flash card and then downloading it to my PC. No loss of information for this boy. With a 32mb compact flash card you can store up to 245 models or you can store 25 models in the transmitters own memory. Most any compact flash card will work with the radio. I've got a 16mb card in mine and I'll never be able to fill it up.
I suppose I could go on and on about more of the great things that this radio can do, but I'm going to cut it here. I own this model myself, and I highly recommend it. I could have spent my money elsewhere but now I'm convinced that Futaba has finally begun to understand the needs of large scale Pilots and the function of their planes. Admittedly, it's quite a bit different from your 9Z or 9CAP, but then, shouldn't it be? Once you've programmed a little bit, flown, and begin understand the great functions of this radio, you'll never go back to those dogs again. This transmitter, in my opinion, is one of the first that is truly designed for large scale and makes it easy to set up and fly planes with multiple servo assignments. You don't need to buy any matchboxes or servo matching equipment. What about JR? I think QQ had to hitch a ride down to Horizon hobby shop to get hisself some more matchboxes. But then again, not everyone's up on the cutting edge. Rockin' Rick
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