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Futaba 14MZ


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Well,

 two years in, I'm still pretty pleased with having spent two months mortgage money on the 14MZ!

I've never known a transmitter polarize opinion so heavily though. There are simply two camps - those who can't see past the bells and whistles, and then there's those whose curiosity got the better of them. Like me...

 I've suffered the jokes about it running Windows and crashing models. Sigh. For the last time, the GUI is a flavour of Windows ME, but in terms of signal processing it's Futaba all the way. Who else offers free downloads for meaningful software updates too?

I've also suffered at the hands of my impish mates who record swear words in place of my carefully crafted voice commands...

But putting the silliness aside, it's a seriously good tranny.

After the furrowed brow, blood and sweat trying to program a 9ZAP WCII, this thing is childs play. I've never had recourse to read the manual. I think Mr Spock must have had a hand in the development. It's a bit, well, logical innit?

If you do take the time to read the book of words however, you'll realise it can do some pretty clever stuff.

Any negatives?

Yep. It should come with it's own power station - the battery is woefully inadequate. Using the touch screen sucks juice like a 4 litre Range Rover. The phrase touch screen is a bit of an oxymoron. It's more of a, 'press far too hard and wait', screen - which is broken at present, whilst I recover from the shock of a £150 bill for Ripmax to fix it.

Will we ever see a fully native 2.4 gig version? I don't fancy lugging around a half arsed Frankenstein's monster, with an aerial poking out it's nether regions.

Other than that I'm still a convert.

How about you.....? 

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I guess there's truth in the saying though, "its not the dog in the fight, but the fight in the dog", but then again "a good big 'un will always beat a god little 'un".

Anyway enough of this rambling off topic Mr Timbo - and explain to the nice man what your post was SUPPOSED to convey in its sarcastic and pathetically unhumorous way

I have only ever seen 1 of these frighteningly expensive sets - and yes it is a very nice bit of kit indeed. Although I have used JR / Spektrum exclusively for the last 20 years or so, I did in fact start off with an old S/H Futaba set, back in the days of "left or right hand" servos ! It was a fine radio, and frankly I see little to differentiate between these two players, apart from the software. They both do the job they are designed to do. I then progressed, ( and funds allowed ) onto my first "computer radio" and it happened to be a JR - an X347 actually, and I, like many I suspect, acquired many receivers, including several PCM versions which in those days were the dogs danglies. This of course, brought with it, brand loyalty.....

(almost certainly a deliberate ploy to encourage such loyalty by the manufacturers)- I was a "JR man".

I could just have easily been a Futaba man

Now the reason for my initial response was all about rarity - and had nothing to do with the features or performance of the Futaba radio - simply that I did not expect a large response to your post PURELY because of the scarcity of the beast !

Enjoy your lovely machine, and apart from perhaps a top spec Mpx set, you have probably the finest, and most feature packed R/C tr you could wish for.......just don't expect a lot of posts agreeing with that....'cos not many peeps have bought them, thats all, honest, now can I have my ball back please Mr, and are we friends again....

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Well I suppose as a percentage of the total cost of the machine......its about right? I know sometimes the expense of replacing an item on a unit does seem extravagent, but if it helps to soften the blow, I was quoted a shade under £5000 to replace the front seat in my car, approx 15% of the total cost of the car, and if both front seats were to be changed that equates to 33% of the car cost !!

Of course it was a JR set and macgregor were doing the job, it would be around 35 quid !!LOL

Sorry couldn't resist

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