In this episode
Join us for the main discussion, practical takeaways, and stories from this episode of RC Plane Lab.
Tune in as the guys sit down and chat with Steve Schlesinger from FrSky as we learn about the history of FrSky, how to pronounce it, and some of the cool things Dave’s new radio can do.
Link to the Ethos 1.6.2 Simulator for the X20RSS:
https://github.com/FrSkyRC/ETHOS-Feedback-Community/releases/download/1.6.2/X20RS-Simulator.exe
Episode 183 Transcript
This transcript has been lightly edited for readability. Timestamps are retained.
Read the full transcript
[0:00] Hello everyone and welcome to the RC Plane Life Podcast. I'm Ron. I'm Tom. And I'm Dave. And I'm Free Sky Steve. So we have a guest today. How are you? How are you doing Steve? Ah, doing great. I'm in san diego it's beautiful today oh yeah sure rub it in probably no wind probably 75 degrees you can fly whenever you want yeah but that's lovely yeah pretty much that's what it's like it's the weather's very delightful
[0:37] down here i wish we could say the same thing well today well toledo was nice too come on that was i loved it there it was nice weather there yeah but we were inside the whole time that's okay and we're hoping because every episode it seems like i have to say this we're hoping for good weather for joe and all and the only reason i brought that up is because you said you were also going to be there yes so we will definitely have to meet up and shake your hand in person
[1:06] because we didn't have a chance to do that at Toledo. No. With the racing and all the swapping, yeah, we didn't find the time to make it over there. Dave did, though. Yeah, I heard you guys made money at Toledo. We went home with more than we left with. Good. We're going to spend it at Joe and All. That's why we came home. We left with because Joe and all is just a big fun. Just OK. I'm done. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
[1:33] It's every episode. I know. I know. So I'm so excited for it. I can't wait. It's coming up soon. So let's get back to our guest. I'm sorry I took over. You did. It's OK. And went on a tangent again. So, Steve, why don. And went on a tangent again. So Steve, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself if you don't mind. Tell us who you are, what you do, how you got into the hobby, pretty much just your whole life story. Who is Steve? Yeah, who is Steve? Oh, okay.
[1:59] How long is this episode? As long as it needs to be. 10 minutes. I understand. Yeah. Okay, so I, this episode as long as it needs to be yeah okay so i well it's one of those things that i wanted to get into the hobby i fell in love with the hobby when i was about seven or eight years old and i i told my grandmother for christmas i want a rc plane this was on a RC plane. This was like 1972. And so she ends up getting me one of those control line planes.
[2:32] And we crashed it and we broke the gas tank on it. And there was this thing on there that said you could send in $2 and you could get a new gas tank and put it in your plane and get back to flying. And in Schlesinger terms terms that's like a million dollars so that was understand it completely yeah that was so that was it i was flying that learning to fly it without a functioning motor a little bumblebee motor that came with it and yeah i enjoyed that but when
[3:06] i was about 16 i walked into a hobby store and i said now i've got a job and i would like to buy an rc plane and the guy behind the counter said yeah okay we started playing trainer it's about 20 20 maybe 30 well that's not so bad i can afford afford that. And he's like, he said, well, you can also, you're going to need servos. You're going to need a motor. You're going to need this. You need a radio. And he starts naming off the prices on everything.
[3:36] And then he said, don't bother adding it up. It's over $1,000. It's going to take you 40 hours to build it. And when you crash it in five minutes, the next flight might last 12 minutes are you still interested that's a heck of a salesman that is a great sales pitch that was yeah that store is out of business would you believe that that's strange i don't know how
[3:57] things like that would happen yeah so back in the 1990s 99 98 somewhere around there i'd try to get back to the hobby again this time i bought a zaggy that was the first foam flying wing that came out yeah and i got it together and i tried my best i what i figured is i threw it at the ground 40 times before I gave up. Yeah. Yeah. And that was then finally around 2015, I was in contact with one of my friends
[4:36] that I knew from, we worked together, years earlier and, he flew RC planes and we got back in contact with each other. And I said, listen, here's something I want to do. I don't know how to do it and I need help. And so that's like, if me, that's like, those words don't come out of my mouth. I need help. Yeah. I hear you. Yeah. yeah and from that but that's huge though right
[5:06] yeah it's huge it's progressive as my wife would say but from that it was that whole mentality of knowing that there's something you want to do but you can't do it and you need to rely on other people in order to help you and you have to be able to go to them and say I don't know about this I would like to do it I might not be very good at it but I want to make sure that I get better at it and with that mentality that's kind of what's been driven me all
[5:41] these years ten years later yeah fast forward, I got way into RC planes. The idea was I had a photography business at the time and I was thinking like, I could do aerial photography. I could put a camera, like my full size digital cameras on my planes and go flying around to take aerial photos are gonna be amazing i've never done that it was always after a while it was just like i became so fascinated with the rc hobby
[6:16] and i wanted to know all about prop sizes and pitches and motors and kv and everything so and take a deep dive on servos and so around 2017 i had i was flying my buddy who got me started said what you need is 72 megahertz that's all you need and these little six channel transmitters, the problem with them was that they held six planes. And by this point I had 50. That's a lot of transmitters. Yeah. So I had six copies of these transmitters and I finally said, I need something that
[7:01] has some more memory to it. And so I got into another radio brand and I was flying a plane with that and I watched it disappear from the skies and never found it again. And after that, I said, I went online and I said, listen, I need a transmitter where I have a solid link. I will jump through hoops. And someone wrote back and a bunch of people wrote back and they listed their favorite transmitters. And one guy wrote back and said, here's one with
[7:31] the best link and you're going to, it's the, everything's less than everything else you're looking at. The prices are amazing. You will not believe the amount of work you're going to have to do in order to make this thing fly. The learning curve is intense. And I said, what? For the best link out there, I'll do that. And that was my first challenge. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that was it. And that was FreeSky 2017, 2018. And I also got involved online. I started on Facebook.
[8:10] I started the iNav FixWing group. I knew nothing about iNav when I started the group. What's iNav? iNav is essentially, it's taking the technology of drones and putting it on airplanes. So you have planes that automatically that you can have FPV first person view, they have cameras with heads up displays in there. So you can get your altitude, airspeed, compass, all sorts of really amazing telemetry and also return to home. And this was, the group started,
[8:47] and we were trying to figure out how to get things together, and it was really interesting. A lot of people, met a lot of people along the way, and the group grew very quickly, and we found the right combination of people, and before we knew it, we had 5,000, 6,000 members in the group. And a lot of people, a lot of interest. The iNav is, I think, at version 8. We were on version, just about version 2 when I started this group. I think it might have been 2.1. So that was 2018.
[9:23] And with that, I had to get involved a bit more with the RC transmitters. And by the time that we got along in, I would say, I was starting to get known for in the Free Sky community, for in the FreeSky community, simply because they had their North American headquarters was about 15 miles from my house. And I would go over there and ask to get my transmitter serviced or
[9:56] I think I was there one time because one of my buddies was selling his FreeSky transmitter to someone else I knew. And I was there to pick it up. And I get, sorry about that. It's okay. That's right, Ron's phone goes off all the time. Yeah, I got this Do Not Disturb. Let's see. Airplane, alarm, flashlight. I'm going to figure this out. I'm going to put this away in the desk. Sorry about that, guys. Okay. That took that, guys. Okay. That took an O word.
[10:27] So, yeah, I essentially, since I was going there so often, the guys who worked at FreeSky knew me. And one of them, it was actually the warehouse manager, said, you should work for us. I mean, you may as well. You're here all the time i might as well get paid you may as well get paid for it yeah but this will get paid to do this yeah and so i said yeah sure and there was essentially as i'm like thinking about
[11:00] this the service manager was messaging the owner's son of free sky saying you gotta talk to this guy and yeah i remember that i was like okay we have an interview next tuesday be here at one o'clock okay the day before i'm going through i'm researching all the backstory on free sky going over the website and everything and my daughter runs in she says i have covet get tested oh geez yeah so it was a zoom interview okay and so yeah that's how it started and when i started it
[11:39] was the transition it was the old free sky just the new FreeSky really was up and running. And it was pretty scary times back then. I would think it probably would have been for any hobby company at that time because people are not spending money. And the first thing that gets cut out is all the extra fun stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This was June of 2022. And, you talk to the guys at the hobby stores and they said, man, we've never sold so many RC cars than we did in
[12:12] 2020, 2021. Everything was great. The flying fields were closed. So yeah, there was, it was scary. The technology, FreeSky, it was, I mean, where it's at now, it's so, it was so rudimentary and so basic. And basically what I would do is I would talk to people about the potential of the radio because it was missing a lot of stuff.
[12:38] just like all the features that people had come to expect from FreeSky back in the days when we had Open tx which was an open source firmware now we're into a closed source firmware and i mean it was it was crazy it just and a lot of people it i don't know it was a lot of people bought into the the radio systems back then and it's amazing how many people actually stuck with it and actually liked it because it was something different. They liked the dual band.
[13:10] When I joined the company, we weren't even sure if that dual band technology would even work. I mean, it was just coming out. The receivers were just coming out with our dual band technology. And so it's been kind of like an uphill trajectory, and there has been a lot of years. I think the hardest year we had was last year because of the development cycle. We essentially did about three years worth of development in one year and lots and lots of updates
[13:39] and frustrated the hell out of a lot of our customer base. But we're finally beyond it right now, and things are so much better. That's good when you can see the worst is behind you. Yeah. So that's Free Sky Steve in a nutshell. What I essentially do is I go around, and I figured out what I had to do is get the radios in front of people. So I'm the guy who goes out and spends most weekends going around the United States, getting in front of people, showing the radios off to them,
[14:11] talking to people, giving out my business card. The first, my business cards all have my cell phone number and my personal email address. And that's kind of a really bold move. Yeah. Dave's getting his card out now just to verify what you said. I think he was calling me like, hurry up with the stories. It's right on there. First thing, mobile phone, right on top. I didn't know how far Dave was going to go. I thought he was going to say it. I was like, okay. Yeah. Okay.
[14:42] So what I like to ask our guests, because I'm an airplane guy, like regardless of brand, I like to know who I'm talking to and like relative experience level. So number one, I'm going to ask you what's your favorite airplane type to fly. And notice I said airplane. I know you do drones too, but I'm not interested in that. And then I want to know what your number is. And when I say your number, I mean, currently in your hangar. How many women I slept with?
[15:10] No, no, no, no. It's a family show. It's a family show. No, the current number of flyable RC planes in your hangar. So number one, and then number two, please. Hmm. All right. Your favorite type. Number one. Yeah. Favorite type. then number two please hmm all right your favorite one yeah favorite type favorite type of airplane i'd say i moved away from the flying wing a few years ago i just love the flying wings
[15:32] but now my favorite type is a high wing oh really okay like a bush type plane bush planes yeah so the timbers the tundras all that oh you have a number guy. You did. Dave did. He called it. And then, so, number. That's really what our listeners want to know. All four of them. Well, I have over 100 planes. I'd say probably ones that I can get flying. Say, let's meet at the field tomorrow and take a plane with you. Yeah, exactly. I could probably get 40 of them flying. That's very nice.
[16:06] That's a good number. Very respectable. It's a very respectable number. Yeah, I like it. That means a lot. That means most of them are not ready to fly like they should be. Well, I mean, we're kind of in the same boat. I understand that. For sure, yeah. There's always lots of projects sitting around. All I got to do is look around my house and you'll see them. Yeah, yeah. Just look over there. Stop. Thank you. Absolutely fantastic.
[16:23] Do you have a preference for type of material, like balsa, foam, paper? I'm a foam guy simply because, I don't know, I'm kind of more of a no-nonsense guy. What I do is, for the first time ever, I joined a flying field. It's 12 minutes from my house. A really nice flying field, too, right? And I go over there, and I'll have two batteries, and I'll have – I get the plane out. Usually one plane, sometimes two. Maybe I'll have on a Saturday, I'll take out four batteries and fly two planes.
[17:02] But I usually – during the week, I have have two batteries i have everything charged up get there and i plug the plane batteries into the plane and i go flying and i'm in and out of the field usually within 40 minutes wow see we like to spend the day like that's to me that's a because it's it i don't know for me anyway it's a it's a a cause it's a, I don't know for me anyway, it's a, it's a, a release.
[17:26] It's a, get away from work and get away from everything and spend an entire day. And that way I can kind of reset and rewind. And yeah, 40 nights is just not enough for me. Well, it depends how often you go to, but that's true. That's very true. It's not very often, not as much as I'd like, but it's more than normal. The thing is that the other side of the hobby where you stand around and schmooze with people, that's like 50 hours a week for me. Yeah, I can see that.
[17:59] Yeah, I mean, and sometimes it's at the field, sometimes it's on the phone. And then, at work, people stop by. And it's just, I'm kind of, this is the lifestyle. I live it. all those rock songs you hear from people over the years, always kind of like how hard it is to be on the road. Jackson Brown sings about it oh yeah things like that and for a guy who loves planes as much as i do going to the airport absolutely sucks
[18:35] it is a horrible experience i don't disagree yeah and so you go to the you end up in a weird city and it's just like, I've not been here before. I don't know anyone here. And the next thing you're like hanging out all afternoon at the field with these people. And then the evening and people are starting to go home and like, okay, I guess I got to go now. And then you go back to your room and it's kind of like, well, not much going on here. Yeah.
[19:07] So I get that quite a, know that whole thing i can see how for the rock stars they're on the they get two three hours on stage and then they're done i get a whole day of it so that's i love it yeah so about how many events do you make it do in a year i'd say typically around there's 52 weeks of the year i'd say around 30. oh my oh wow that's a year on the road constant yeah that's a lot of time on the. Yeah, I do.
[19:48] It's to the point now where I have to sit down and physically say like, I need to schedule a weekend off every now and then. So yeah, we could, we could do stuff around the house. Yeah. And, but yeah, there's, I do enjoy going out to different events. The Joe Knoll, I've been to the Perry Swap. I do all these things, Perry Swap, Joe Knoll. Of course, Toledo. And then there's a number of events. Arizona has quite a few of them. There's some in California.
[20:22] There's Big Thunder in the Valley Jet Rally. That's always a good one. And now I'm starting to get to the point where I have to pick and choose between events because they tend to always lump their events together. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of commonality in the dates of a lot of these events that we'd like to go to also. You have to prioritize, right? Yeah. They just overlap and you can't make everyone. Yeah, or you plan a trip around it.
[20:47] So last year, my wife and I took a vacation up to Canada and did an event up there and then had a vacation and came down. She said, I'll see you later. And I said, okay, I'm going to New York on 9-11. And I flew in. I thought it was going to be a scary day it was like so beautiful it was it's crystal clear day flying to new york we went i went to neat the neat fair unbelievable the guy said i've been coming for 20 years i've never seen weather like this this
[21:19] is just perfect and these were there are a bunch of guys who go to this event and they spend all week there. And I mean, they're literally like, oh my gosh, we have only two days left. And they're like, it's, this is their Shangri-La. It's to get away from their wives and they're just having a great time. Yeah, I can understand that. With Joe Nolk. Okay, I had to bring it around. So are there events where you go to that you actually get to fly?
[21:49] Or is it always like, are you just always on when you're at an event? what I'm saying? Usually I go by myself to a lot of these events. Joe Nolk, I of course go with the company. But there are some neat times. Like I was at an event so it was the which one was that it's the kentucky jets and that one jets over kentucky and jok jets over kentucky okay jets over kentucky and i was there and one of our field reps said i got a
[22:36] an edf you can fly and i said cool i don't know if i want to fly here because they have like the best pilots in the world here exactly that one is huge yeah yeah it's huge and like oh all right we'll take you up. I've got the same radio as you do. We'll set up a trainer and then I'll flip the switch and you fly it. All right, cool. Do it. And he said, okay, you did great. Let's take up. Next thing is a turbine. Let's do that. I'm like, oh, that's a really dumb idea. Oh, no.
[23:01] Let's do it. Yeah, this sounds absolutely fabulous. There's everyone standing there. And it was a really cool experience because there are people that I really admire, really great pilots. And just to walk up and be among them and fly, it's like a dream come true. Right. Yep. it's like, it's like getting up there and singing, you got Geddy Lee and Neil Peerth and Alex Lifeson, and they're going to let you come up there and sing Limelight.
[23:29] And you're not going to sing it very well, but you're there with all these other really cool guys, and it's a great experience. Yeah, I love that. I love that reference. I'm probably the only one of the three of us that got it, but sorry. You're right. I had no clue. Let's talk about Rush. Oh, I'm sitting there thinking, I don't recognize those pilots' names. I was sitting here staring at Ron going, is he going to get it? Is he going to get it? Absolutely not. You should know that one.
[23:59] Most of our listeners probably won't grab that one either. But there's some I know that will. At least you explained it. So now I'm on the end. Yeah, yeah. I get it. it now, so. Yeah. No, that's awesome. And you're right. That's an absolutely terrible idea to fly someone else's turbine because it's going to make you want one. Oh, I got you. I see where you're going with that. Yeah, it's going to make you want to fly one. It draws you in. Exactly.
[24:20] It draws you in, and then it's game over. Like, yeah. Yes, we have been bitten by the turbine bug, and we're trying to drag Dave in, but he's kicking and screaming. That's it. Southern California, what it means is, and it's true of a lot of other places, what happens around the United States is there are a bunch of guys who say, we're going to fly turbines and they look at a map and they say, where does civilization end? And they put it on the map. Well, this is the last place anyone
[24:51] with a reasonable IQ would ever live. And there are crazy people out further, but they live off the grid. And you say, yeah, why don't we go about 20 miles inland? And then when the pavement ends, we're going to make a dirt road that goes on for another five miles. And we'll put a flying field there and we'll fly turbine jets all day long. We'll crash into absolutely nothing of value. And then as soon as they do that, usually within the first five or 10 years,
[25:23] someone comes along and has property right next to where this field is at. And they say, my gosh, this is a great place to put a housing track. Yeah. That's what's happening to the Tucson, one of the Tucson clubs. They're losing their field due to encroaching, developing that. It's a shame. It's a great field. I've been there, flown there, actually. It's a shame. It's a fairly common story, actually. Yeah, that's the thing about turbines. I do talk, we have a lot of,
[26:01] a few of my customers are in the turbine business. And I'm saying saying this is one hobby where the interest on turbines is through the roof. It seems like what would happen 10 years ago would be that people would go to a hobby store and they buy the Horizon Hobby Apprentice. And then they would buy the T-28, and then they would buy a Timber. And then they would go through the entire catalog. And if they didn't crash the plane within a couple weeks or a month or two, they were
[26:39] usually bored of it, and they sold it to a buddy or traded it for something else or took it to the Toledo swap meet something else or took it to the toledo swap meet and got money guilty right and so it was essentially horizon hobby i think did very well on that whole let's you're in the ecosystem let's have you guys go through and buy everything we sell but now what it seems like, people buy the AeroScout, and the next thing they want is an EDF.
[27:10] And then if they can still fly an EDF after six months, they want to get into turbines. Yeah, yeah. Well, that is the goal for us as we kind of got going into the hobby too. Not when we started, but as things came i mean i would say around then it was easier to get into turbines and you say easier and it has gotten easier but it's gotten like a much less expensive to get into i mean it's still not cheap i'm part of
[27:36] being yeah deny that but but no i i yeah you're you're exactly right steve it's you make something easy if you make it too easy, and it gets boring, and people lose interest, and jets are not easy. Yes. And there's the thing that also is not easy, and the people, there's two other segments of the hobby I think that are really kind of interesting that people tend to get into. One, I see there's a lot more interest in pattern planes
[28:07] yeah there is a bit of a resurgence yeah which i'm not mad about yeah extreme flight planes are very popular people who never fly pattern in their life never have any interest love those planes people who fly scale love those planes it It's just, they're really nice planes. They are. And, yeah, AJ Aircraft, also great planes. And then the other one who these people, it's a very expensive hobby, like rivaling, I can't even say rivaling. Rivaling? Yes, thank you. There you go.
[28:42] I can't even say rivaling. Rivaling? Yes, thank you. There you go. Rivaling the turbine market is gliders of all things. Yes, I cannot believe how expensive some of the big composite ones get. Right. It's ridiculous. Yeah, there's, one of my dealers, that's why I'm down here for this weekend, is this event. I keep saying this should be on TV. This would be something that would be so cool to see on television because people would get it.
[29:22] Essentially what happens is this is the DLG events, Discus Launch Gliders. So there's no motor. You have throw them and ron has one so yeah it was a small one yeah but yeah and so they start off at the idea is you have to start you get 10 minute segment so you're flying for 10 minutes i think the first one you're up
[29:42] for one minute see how high you can get you have to land at minutes. I think the first one, you're up for one minute, see how high you can get. You have to land at a certain time. Then the second one is, I believe, three minutes. And then the third one is six minutes. So six minutes for me would be about 12 flights. It's very quickly up and down for those on me. Well, but I mean, the rules state you have to take off on the field and you have to land
[30:06] on the field but the rest of the time you don't have to be on the field and you'll see planes literally run out of lift 100 feet from the field and they're in the middle of a bunch of weeds you see guys running getting cut up getting their planes out of there because they had to get back and launch again. Because this is serious. They're being contentious. It's okay to lose out on one of those times, but you don't want to lose out more than one. So it's crazy.
[30:35] And then after the finals happen, it happens like at four o'clock on Sunday. And this is, you see people who, the look of terror. the look of terror when you don't see your plane anymore? Yes. Yes. We all know that feeling. Yeah, I know the feeling and I know the look. Yeah. And you see these guys and they're running as fast as they possibly can because these little one meter DLG planes are essentially half a mile away, and they're caught up in a thermal,
[31:07] and there are all sorts of planes floating around up there, and they're not exactly certain which one is theirs. Or they lose it behind a tree. And so, I mean, you'll see guys who show up with those DLGs, and I figure in each one of those is about $2,000. Oh, for the full carbon ones and stuff. Yeah, they get pricey. Yeah. So they have three of them they show up with. And there's one guy from Japan who went home with one. It lost one. One crashed in a tree. I mean, these are things.
[31:37] People lose these planes. There were six of them lost at this competition. You see people running as fast as they can just so they can keep track of their plane and bring it back. It is, it is insane. I, the competitiveness and the silliness of competitiveness is, but it is really kind of fun and to watch this event and they're just a really great bunch of guys. And, it's, they help each other out too. It's there's,
[32:04] even though they're competing against each other, they're all friends and they'll help each other out. So it's really kind of a neat experience to watch that. then we, so yeah, the turbo, so gliders are big. We talked about that. The, the other one that's kind of of interesting the one that i thought was dead and not coming back were helicopters yeah they're making another like it's like a helicopter
[32:31] renaissance right now really yeah they are there's like several new manufacturers like in the last few years that are making some really quality a lot of new technology has changed yeah i mean boring no i'm kidding boring are there like if you've tried to fly a full-on helicopter? No, I have not, because I don't think I could. I absolutely will make fun of it, but not be able to do it myself. Yeah, they're anything but boring.
[32:53] Yeah, so, yeah, the helicopters are, there hasn't been a lot that has come new to the helicopter arena. I think the last thing were some new speed controllers that people were all excited about a few years ago. But what happened was there were a few guys who, well, race quads, the drones, the guys who fly those race drones. They used something. I mentioned INAV. INAV was forked off of clean flight. The other fork was beta flight.
[33:31] So a bunch of guys, not a bunch, a few guys got together, and they took a fork of beta flight, and they brought it to helicopters. And the idea is that they have these really inexpensive flight controllers you can put into the helicopters because they're these are all they call fly barless units okay yeah and yeah so this was something that they came out with we have an employee keith williams who works with us he's was the guy that was working in with the
[34:06] rotor flight developers. And I know they were working on something for, for us. And there was this guy that I was in contact with. I'm still in contact with Rob Thompson and out of the UK. And he was messaging me and we're talking about how in this development cycle is over we need some time to work on making free skies products work better with the lewis scripts for running this flight controller program and i was putting my own two cents in when i could and i
[34:39] was trying to help out and then we had an announcement we've had this flight controller one of them for rotor flight and it actually had one of our receivers hooked up to it we actually have two versions of it and i'm thinking like oh this would be something interesting the company sometimes doesn't really think things through super well and this one might not be all that great i'll see how it does and
[35:08] i got the the announcement came out on a monday morning in china time and it was sunday morning my time and i got probably 10 text messages that day when When can I get this? I need this now. And I never see anything like that. Usually when a new product comes out, I'm talking about, we have some really cool stuff that have come out in the last year. And people usually get one or two text messages. I don't have 10 people with definitive, I need this.
[35:42] And I didn't know what the whole story was. Essentially, the guy who wrote the lewis script the lewis script is like an app for your smartphone it's this was something that it's his own little program that worked with the free sky transmitter the guy who did it spent six hours a day for a year writing it and the thing is way the hell over the top is such a great piece of work it's just incredible and people it was weird because i was at urcha urcha is their
[36:15] their event for helicopters and back in 2022 i believe was. And I remember we were talking to people, trying to talk to them about, this radio system when it was still pretty new and still up and coming. And they were, people were like, somewhat interested. I can see how this might be pretty cool. Yeah. One guy kept coming by, looked at it. He ended up winning in the radio in the raffle
[36:46] took it home really loved it two weeks later he sold it because the helicopter guys they have these radios called mikado they're sure these really beautiful 1500 plastic radios and i mean that's they they're into that that's it That's their high end radios and they, the flight controllers that work with it. And I never thought I'd see the day that people were getting rid of their Mikados to buy free sky transmitters. It's just really weird. It's, it's,
[37:16] it's nice. It's really cool to be in that. So we're into all these different segments. We're into the glider segment. We're into definitely into the turbine segment. And yeah, so that's all the different things we jump into as far as FreeSky is concerned. Okay, so we're moving the conversation to FreeSky. I'm going to ask the question. I know everybody here wants, is it FreeSky? Is it FRSky?
[37:44] Is it TriSky? What is it? And why is it free sky is it fr sky is it tri sky what is it then why is it whatever it is okay so it was actually the first question i asked the president of the company who am i working for yeah well i'm glad i'm glad to hear you say that yeah that was that was the first one he said said Free Sky. Okay. So what happened, well, the company came out in 2010, and that was around the time that Twitter came out.
[38:10] You might remember Twitter was TWTTR when it first came out. I don't. I've never had a Twitter account, so I don't know. We're old. They are. I mean, that's okay. I'm old, too, yeah. But, yeah, so there was an era for about two years where dropping vowels was really a cool idea. Ah, okay. That makes sense. Yep. Yeah. I really wish they just called it, put the whole free sky in there. Okay. So it is definitively free sky.
[38:41] That is the proper pronunciation. If I called someplace and I say, this is Steve from Free Sky, people go, what? And I say, this is Steve from FR Sky. Oh, okay, yeah. Hold on a second. Well, yeah, and that's, we have not known, and I think we've all called it different things. I don't know how many times since we've started talking about it. Frisky. Yeah. Frisky. Frisky. I've heard all that. I'm sure you've heard the mall. Father Sky. I heard my favorite was F-R-I Sky.
[39:15] I don't know where the I came from. Frisky. Okay. All right. Well, I mean, you've probably heard the mall, I'm sure. So 2010 then is when FreeSky was founded, apparently. Yes. What have you seen change? And I guess not going all the way back to then because that's far. But in the time you've been with them, what has been like your favorite thing that you've seen happen? And really just as like Dave has just bought his first free sky radio.
[39:45] He has the, and I will let you explain because I don't know what it is. It's the X20RS. Okay. So. Nice. It's a very handsome radio. Very good looking radio to us. Which color is it? Well, as we're looking at it, it's orange. But in reality, it's red. Yeah. It's a cherry red. Right. And so Tommy, and actually all three of us are kind of, well, Dave's now getting out of the herd. But our Spectrum guys, we have flown, I don't know about Tommy, but I have flown Spectrum since I started.
[40:14] So honestly. Thank you, everybody. Have a great show. I'll be talking to you later. And I get it. Yeah. Well, listen, like I haven't always been Spectrum. Like I get it. Well, listen, I haven't always been spectrum. Like I'm old, I've been flying planes. I went Futaba JR spectrum. I was aerotronics and then I was Futaba. So I was not brand loyal to really anybody. And once I got, well, actually my first DSsm radio was actually a jr with a with a module
[40:46] that's how i got into spread spectrum so well and for me not that it matters but it was just the next progression like the thought of going somewhere else didn't even occur to me and i don't know if it's just because that's what the hobby store had if the hobby shop stock those that's kind of what they were pushing your local support yeah and what you're comfortable with that's what it's it's hard to step out into something
[41:07] right now yeah exactly but anyway so i guess the point of that rambling was kind of explain to us from base model to top of the line what do you guys offer channel account features all that kind of stuff doesn't have to be in depth but just kind of give us an overview of your catalog so that maybe we can get some terminology down that's different. Like you're talking about the operating system you guys use and all that. Ethos, right? Right. That is
[41:34] not having been experienced with it. That is just a term that I'm not familiar with. Right. So the top of the line radio right now is 24 channels okay okay the bottom of the line radio right now is 24 channels okay interesting okay so it's across the board easy to keep track of so number one the whole reason why all of a sudden you're what ix 10 or IX 8 or whichever one you got. IX 14 and IX 20. Okay. IX 14 became a 20-channel transmitter and if you do the firmware updates
[42:13] and even your IX 8 will go up to 14 channels. And X, yeah. See, you're having the same issues because we kind of know the numbers and stuff on that that we don't know for free sky yeah right so the idea was so kind of i might have
[42:35] to step back a little bit and explain this we had going back to 2010 when we first came out with the transmitter, we actually, we didn't have a transmitter. What we had was a module and we had receivers and we had this thing called ACCST. That was the protocol we were using at the time. was a D8 protocol, D as in dog, D8 protocol. And so it broadcasts out on eight channels. And then before long, it was maybe a year or two before we were at D16, 16 channels. So eight is the magic number.
[43:19] It went from eight to 16 to 24. So each one of those are frames, one, two, or three frames. And so going to when we're talking about channels, the whole thing that happened was around 2014, the guys who started flying drones needed to have a lot more channels because they needed things to turn things, lots of switches and turn on channels. And they didn't have very much money. And around that time we had what was known as the X9D and it was a transmitter. And people have said, this looks
[44:00] really familiar to a JR transmitter. Yeah yeah because we bought the mold from them nice that was jr number one version one of jr when they went under and we got the mold and we had this transmitter and it was on something called s bus s's and sam bus and what that thing did was it put out 16 channels so explain to people you have an eight channel receiver you can also do 16 channels and then when you think about it
[44:34] it's kind of strange because all 16 channels get broadcast at the same time even if you have we have a four channel receiver we did have a four channel we have six channel receivers those always broadcast out 16 channels it's just that there's six ports you can plug into on those receivers that's really more the port count than what's actually being
[44:56] sent over the air right over the air it's always 16 channels right or 24 depending if you need those 24 channels most people don't so that makes it interesting and i guess with spectrum they've always had the ability to i guess they had somewhat something similar to what we had as well when it came to the the number of channels that they could broadcast they broadcast out more channels than it might appear. So I think we helped push that along with the whole thing.
[45:33] The hobby doesn't really need to be – transmitters and receivers don't need to be sold like they've always been sold 20 years ago. It used to be a thing where it was a lot different back in the 72 megahertz days. You would have to have a transmitter. Oh, it does six channels. That's an expensive transmitter. My first transmitter had five channels. I remember that. And so, yeah. But now, the whole idea is for a receiver, you're not really paying for a lot of you're just paying
[46:08] for the available ports and i pretty much what i tell people is we have a six channel receiver that's dual band it's 40 you get a 10 channel is 60 i always tell people it's worth the extra 20 if you can afford it to get the 10 channel because it's so much more versatile it's not even funny and then our 18 channel receiver which guys use to fly turbine jets is 105 dollars if you got another 40 you can get it with stabilization okay gotcha so
[46:42] that's something you talked about the old 72 megahertz days and yes the way of buying radios back then to to our listeners who aren't old enough to remember you bought exactly like you said you bought a transmitter you bought a whole package together you bought the transmitter it came with the receiver a set of four servos let's say a
[47:01] switch a battery either a rechargeable battery or a battery holder that you could put nike or double a's double a's in thank you but it was a matched set right they had crystals that they transmitted and received on and they had to be matched and tuned together from the factory before they went out the door and when you bought them you bought the complete thing it's not always that way anymore right it was even more wonderful
[47:25] back then because usually they didn't have a lot of model memory in those maybe they had none yeah well right one the one you were flying so you had 10 planes you had 10 different transmitters exactly yep or you were pulling a receiver out and switching it over to yeah so and retrimming everything yeah so that that's the old way of doing things for our younger listeners. But it's something that is hard for old guys like me to wrap our heads around is,
[47:52] okay, we've got a receiver that has six ports. I have a transmitter that transmits, in my case, 14 channels. 20. Well, 20 now. Yeah, thank you, Ron. channels. 20. Or well, 20 now. Yeah. Thank you, Ron. So like, how do I, like, it was just difficult for me to wrap my head around how a six channel receiver can actually perform more than six channels. what I'm saying? Like it's got six ports that I have six things plugged into
[48:18] and the receiver figures out how to manage the extra air quotes channels. And that takes some unlearning to get used to. Right. It's because it broadcasts. All the transmitters do is broadcast zeros and ones. Right. Yep. And then they put them into each eight channels as a frame. And so it's either one two or three frames and it broadcasts out very quickly so this is one of the things people sometimes ask me about is
[48:53] what we do is i think in spectrum we call it holes and fades and i'm not really sure what those things mean and what the difference is between the hold and the fade and i if i understand that right really quick a fade is a lost byte of data or bit okay i think it's a bit and then a hold is 24 consecutive lost frame or lost fades yeah so it's the same thing just in multiples right yep okay
[49:28] so thanks for explaining i didn't know that one i just when we did that we talk about in the free sky world is we talk about valid frame rates vfr and so people will see that as you fly away your frame rates will drop you get further and further away at some point you'll get a message low vfr warning which means you can keep going and it's kind of like the low gas light on your car is it am i gonna be standing on the side of the road and five miles will it be
[50:06] 50 miles i'm not sure but you can actually go much further than you might think with the low vfr warning but usually it's a good time to turn around and come back and get to better better radio range so people will look at this and they'll say like, Oh my gosh, I had this flight. I looked at these logs and there's one point I had 43, I was at 43%. I'm like, I'm barely flying. And then I explained to them essentially the best way to describe it is like motion picture.
[50:45] When you have single frames, you put them 24 frames together in a second. That looks like things are moving, right? We're on these 16 channels. You're doing like 120, 140 frames a second. So if you lose half of them or more than half of them you still have still got control yeah they're still playing yeah we found out we can go all the way down to about 10. i don't recommend it but you can go down to about 10 and still fly a plane it's going
[51:19] to be by that point it's going to be very touchy because the controls are going to jerk just it's feel robotic and that'll depend on the plane too and speed and maneuverability and all that kind of stuff yeah so yeah but we're in a world right now where it does i i tell people don't really get too fixated on on that and even on the spectrum side don really get too fixated on, on that. And even on the spectrum side,
[51:49] don't get too fixated on fades and holds and anything else. I don't know if, typically this is where things are. I mean, you guys have been flying. I told you I've been,
[52:10] I came in around 2015. You got, So the last 10 years, you guys have been flying for probably since before the turn of the century. They have, but not me. I started and really got into it in about 2014. Dave and I started at about the same time, 87 for me. 19. So yes, before the turn of the century. Yes. Well before the turn of the century. Yes. Well, before the turn of the century. 78, 79 is 19, 78, 79. That's when I got my first taste. Oh man. You had parents that loved you,
[52:33] man. That's great. I did. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I did not have, I mean. Watch how you say that. Yeah. Hopefully they're not listening. Yeah. But no, it was, that's cool. That's great. So you've seen the regression of the hobby. Oh yeah. And so a lot of times, if you came in at 79, your first radio was computerized? No, no, it was. Wideband AM. Yeah, exactly. Okay. So a lot of people. It was completely analog. Yeah, exactly. Okay. So a lot of people. It was completely analog.
[53:09] Yeah, completely analog. But there are people come up to me at flying events. And I've heard this so many times now. People come up to me and they say, I won't let. I've been flying for 30 years. And usually the next thing they're going to say will not impress me, but they have to say this in 40 years or whatever. And they always say, I fly my planes with no expo and no rates, no expo. I can tell you I will never say that to anybody because I use the snot out of expo.
[53:42] And tour rates and all. I use it all. Yep. It's there, right? It's there, yeah. It makes the plane fly so much better. For sure. And they'll sit there and talk to me like I should be asking for their autograph. Wow. And then they say, I'm the real pilots. And, like, they tell me all these things. And then I'll watch them get in the car and they'll drive off in an $80,000 Honda with every bell and whistle they could possibly get in there.
[54:10] And so that was one of the things I discovered over time was that there's a lot of people who are in the hobby who – I think a lot of people get attracted to the – going to the field, like you said before, chilling and hanging out with your friends. A lot of guys love wrenching on planes. If you want to have a conversation with someone, just mention the motors. What kind of motor do you have in there?
[54:34] Oh, I got a DLE or I got desert aircraft. And it just kind of like, okay, once they get going, man, it's just like, they'll find another guy guy. Next thing they're like going back and forth. Oh, 200cc. Oh, my gosh. Really? How was that? I don't have a plane for it yet, but I got to get one. Yeah. so they get excited. Oh, yeah. You talk about radios, setting up models, and they're like, yeah, all right.
[55:01] They're not into setting up planes on their radios there are a number of guys who love setting up models setting up planes love taking transmitters to the fullest extent yeah but the thing that about me is that when i go to my flying club what i do is when i'm there i show up and i fly i don't talk to people about their transmitters unless they have an issue or unless they want to discuss it with me. Right.
[55:30] I'm there to just go have fun and fly. And I don't want to be known as the guy. Here comes the salesman again. He's going to talk to me about my spectrum transmitter. Here we go. just kind of like, no, just like a guy goes to the flying field and enjoys the hell out of it. Just like you. So as long as, and believe it or not, I have this flying field that I go to that has absolutely no problems in the world.
[55:55] That's probably the single best place on the planet to fly any transmitter. Nice. Yeah. There's no radio problems to speak of. And there's been like a number of clubs that I've heard about through the years who there was like this and all of a sudden over a course of one week, things fall apart and all of a sudden people are crashing planes. And that's kind of what happened.
[56:30] If you're going through this transition from 72 megahertz, and those were dangerous days because you had to be on the same band. You had to put a flag out back in the day, right? Like I'm flying on Channel 36. And no one is supposed to fly Channel 36 while you're out flying. But there's always the one goofball who wants to check his rates or check his – I don't't know if my other ones are going all the way so let me flip my radio on and check it out
[56:49] I'm not going to interfere with anybody and all of a sudden your plane's going to the ground yeah yeah because he's interfering yeah yeah Dave and I lived through that yeah yeah yeah things have come a long way and things have got a lot better oh man used to avoid Blackhawk helicopters you remember they used to fly past and any the blackhawks were in the neighborhood you landed because anytime they'd key the mic they would shoot you down yep that's amazing how far things
[57:12] there was a cell tower at the old anyway yeah well okay so steve i want to give you a chance turn on or put on your salesman hat tell Tell us why you like FreeSky radios. Tell us what you have to offer. Tell us how to set up a, like I said, the three of us pretty much know how on a spectrum radio to set up a new model. How do you do that on like what Dave has? And actually like from your lowest transmitter to your top of the line transmitter, is it all the same
[57:47] or are there different operating systems, different ways of doing things? Does that make sense? They're all the same. Okay. So we have a model wizard. It's not very hard to find. You have to hit an airplane icon or the MOD button for model. Dave is turning his transmitter on now. I think he's trying to listen it's so simple i love it okay okay and then okay so dave you're in there right now oh yeah and
[58:11] we just hit the plus yeah hit the plus button right there create a new model and then you go in there and it's pretty straightforward you go in there and it will ask you how many motors would you like how many ailerons how many flaps how many rudders, just the whole thing. Okay, so it takes you through. It's like a tutorial. It's like a wizard. Yeah, a wizard. It's a wizard, yeah. It goes in there and it builds everything. It builds all your mixes for you.
[58:38] And I don't know how far Dave's gotten in there, but when you're done, you get in the mixes, there's a very small plus button on the top right corner you press that and there's 20 more canned mixes that has everything that's cool yeah there's this is the best of every possible world the thing that the thing i will tell you about the the freeze guide transmitters is first and foremost
[59:08] will tell you about the the freeze guide transmitters is first and foremost this i don't know you you guys like to travel you like to go to different events you you find yourself flying at different flying fields going around or you just kind of stay at the same playing fields we don't fly as as many as we would like but we do fly i would say on average per year at least five maybe six different locations. Yeah, maybe a little bit more than that, but something around there.
[59:29] Yeah, some of them are horrific. There's the AMA field out in, let's close. Muncie? Muncie. Yes. That's on our list to go to. We have not been to that one yet. So that one, and there's another AMA field, Arizona Modelers is. Oh, I'm sorry. I know what you're talking about. I thought you meant AMA headquarters as Arizona modelers is. Oh, I'm sorry. I know. I know what you're talking. I thought you meant AMA headquarters. Nevermind. Oh yeah. The AMA headquarters has problems as well.
[59:51] There's some of these fields, they just have problems. There's something out there that blocks the signal. Now that's what's changed. I tell people listening to transmitters and receivers, they've not gotten worse over time. What has happened, though, is the quality of the radio environment that we're living in has gotten much worse over time. Much more congestion. Yeah. And so there's something called signal swamping. And what it's about,
[1:00:21] because if you've ever listened to the ballgame and you're driving through downtown downtown and all of a sudden you're hearing Ranchero music for a few seconds, that's signal swamping. That's something you've gotten so close to an antenna that is actually, even though you're not listening to that particular channel, you will because something is putting so much of a signal out. And there's a lot of things that are showing up out in the field.
[1:00:47] Not only are we using 72 megahertz, or I'm sorry, 2.4 gigahertz, we're also, there are things for agriculture and industrial and everything else where they communicate. One of the places I like to fly at, they actually have, it's just a simple neighborhood. And they, what I figured out is that they have transformers and they did not want to tear up the ground and keep running the cat five cable to all over the neighborhood. So what they did is they use
[1:01:15] about once an hour, they'll put a signal out from the transformers using 2.4 gigahertz. And it, if you happen to fly in that path at that time when that signal is coming out i think what they're doing is the transformers are saying this is how much energy we've used if you fly through it your plane goes down that's unfortunate yeah yeah so seeing that and the thing that what i do is i talk to people, look at the radios.
[1:01:47] I've had a number of these conversations in the past where we go over the radios, talk about all the features. We look about this whole ethos operating system. It's exactly the same from the lowest models to the highest model. So you learn it once and you don't have to learn it again. Right. You learn it once, don't have to learn it again. And I've had a number of people say, I got 40 planes. I have all these different receivers in there and
[1:02:10] the financial investment for me to switch is too much. And I'm like, okay, just take my business card. And then I get a message emailed from them. Like I have my favorite plane. I love this thing. And it's just the worst feeling in the world when you've lost your signal. You're flying and all of a sudden you have nothing. Yeah, you're just helpless. Yeah, helpless. And you're standing and watch your plane go down. Some of you
[1:02:36] spent all winter building and you just love that thing. And so then they say, what, I'm ready for this now. And unfortunately, I've had this conversation more and more recently. And, it's just people, they come to us for different reasons. But the one thing I would say is that what we have is this dual band technology, which is when the 2.4 gigahertz goes away, even if it's for a second or two, the 900 megahertz takes over.
[1:03:08] And so is it listening and working truly both at one time, or is it only listening to 2.4 until there's a glitch, then it switches over? That's a great question because that's the difference between our radio system. Jetting and Futaba, Futaba has just started to play with 900 megahertz and they've put it in but they followed the jetting model which is when you go into failsafe and if you have a second receiver on there which is 900 megahertz will go to that.
[1:03:40] FreeSky what we're doing is simultaneously getting 2.4 gigahertz and 900 megahertz listening at the same time. And the best way to describe it is that when 2.4 gigahertz, when the number of frames degrades to a certain extent, it drops below a certain threshold, it will start listening to the 900 megahertz. Okay.
[1:04:07] certain threshold, it will start listening to the 900 megahertz. Okay. So it wants to run primarily on the 2.4, but they're both running simultaneously. Right. They're both running simultaneously. When one signal grades, the 2.4 degrades to a certain point, it will fill in the missing frames with the 900 megahertz. And so then that obviously only works with compatible receivers from FreeSky. Right. So the exact same information is being sent from the transmitter on both bands. Yes.
[1:04:32] Simultaneously. Yeah. Okay. I've never had a problem with 2.4 with an issue. Not yet. But I just really, really love having the backup there just in case. Just in case. Yeah. And it runs seamlessly. You never see it yeah i i would say this that i i i like flying at two primarily two different fields and one's in the middle of a residential neighborhood at a high school i have a sunday crew i've been
[1:04:57] flying with for the last seven years and then i like flying at my flying field by flying field my 2.4 gigahertz, I can fly forever with it. I can't see far enough for it to lose signal. But when I go take that same plane and fly in the middle of this residential field, I'm looking at the same telemetry logs from the same plane, two different places. Oh, my gosh. from the same plane, two different places.
[1:05:27] Oh my gosh, it's like, it is way down there because there's so much more noise in the environment. And that's interesting that you can see the data. Like you can, it's real, it's tangible. It's right there on the screen. You can go through the logs and see the losses and fades and whatever they're called. You could do it all. Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, and there's some things about the radio system so we have that the ethos operating system is essentially
[1:05:51] it's an operating system that was built from the ground up it's not it does not run on android it's not a an app this is and it's its own operating system it is designed for the H7 microcontroller, which is one of the most advanced microcontrollers. These are, you have microcontrollers in your transmitters right now. This was a new one. It took all new code in order to work with it. So we had to write it from the ground up. It started in 2021.
[1:06:26] had to write it from the ground up. It started in 2021. And it's really, right now, four years later, we're really getting into our own with this whole thing. It's, we got it to where we were before with OpenTX and now we're moving beyond it. And the idea is that what you can do when you have a essentially a something that has so much horsepower is that this is something that
[1:06:56] is going to be good for the next 10 to 15 years the idea that's one of the things that i that i get scared about when as a, which is I'm buying into a radio system. I'm spending all this time to learn the radio system. And then what happens three years from now when we're no longer flying with Ethos, we're now flying with this new great operating system that we're going to start from the ground up all over again. And so, I mean, a number of guys have told me
[1:07:26] that they fly certain brands and they've said, like, I've been through four different operating systems. and so for us… That terrifies a guy like me, who's old and doesn't like to, adapt to new technology. Yeah, yeah, exactly. you don't really want to be changing that much so that that's what we we have is something that is going to keep growing and i did mention this rotor flight lewis grip the lewis grips are things written by
[1:07:59] basically hobbyists and at this guy this thing is actually taxing the transmitter. It's actually, I can see it working. It's, it is pushing the transmitter to its, I wouldn't say it's like massively slowing it down, but it's the only thing I've ever put on the transmitter. I can say, wow. Yeah. It's thinking about this for a second or so. This, this is insane but the idea is right now people buy the transmitters
[1:08:28] and receivers because they have a couple of reasons number one the dual band number two it's less expensive you get telemetry on every receiver we have that's a modern receiver and there's just like a lot of benefits to it. But what ends up happening though, is when you get to the thing that I think most people aren't looking at, or at least something I never hear from anybody is they're buying a radio because they have found this really cool Lewis script. They want to run on it.
[1:09:02] So RotoFlight is actually the first time that I've heard that where people are buying the transmitter because the Lewis script is so much better than on any other radio system that works with the Lewis script. And they are coming to us because they realize that this thing is capable. The thing about, I know this is not really our wheelhouse, but the idea is when you fly a race quad, you are hooking up to a PC pretty much all the time. You're making changes. You have to hook up to a PC.
[1:09:33] Your computer programs a little computer in the race drone. Helicopter guys don't really want to do that. we're kind of like a lot of them are plane guys, too. want to do that. Kind of like a lot of them are plane guys too. And what they want is the ability, if they want to make changes, they want to be able to do it from the radio. And that's why this Lewis script is so amazing. It's because they're telling you can actually get inside of there and do all the things you
[1:10:00] would do on your computer at home, but at the flying field. So this is like FreeSky's version of forward programming. Yeah. Speaking of forward programming, now I know you guys are spectrum guys. And then the thing that you're going to hear is that there are a number of spectrum guys out there who have various planes. Like, for example, I don't know know i just hit 60 recently and then and it's about time
[1:10:27] for me to start buying umx's because i always notice that you get over a certain age and you just love those umx's oh god i'm at that age i i like them too for the small plane they fly so good yeah it's amazing most of them so we have something called the multi-protocol module. And the multi-protocol module fits on the back of the transmitter. It's a little light bay. And you put it on there and it works with DSM, DSM2, DSMX. It also works with something called V761, I believe.
[1:11:03] Something that starts with the V7. And you're like, what the hell is that? That's this weird little protocol that works on all those little Rage RC planes. Oh, okay. Yeah. It's got a massive protocol list that it does. $100 warbirds or whatever they are. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. They're kind of neat. Yeah, those are neat. So it works. You can fly your UMXs. You can fly all your spectrum planes with base planes with this transmitter or with the multi-protocol module.
[1:11:32] You can even get telemetry from them. And we even have forward programming now. So the idea, it used to be like you would have to hold on to your spectrum transmitter because you would need it to program your planes. You can do that now from the freeside transmitter and so then okay so the ethos is the the operating system operating system you guys run off of and so that has been built for the ground up
[1:11:58] for just for your transmitter for your company and then with this other module module you're talking about you've you've kind of i don't want to say jailbroken what's the word reverse engineered the the signals of other manufacturers then to make it work with yours right essentially the multi-protocol project is an open source project and this is something that it's been around for quite a few years the idea is that
[1:12:27] you can it works with a lot of things it works with fly sky it works with groppner it works with very old for taba and so there's a large high tech a large history of all these different receivers that it can work with. And the idea is that you can fly with our transmitter with all these planes. The thing is that you can do a hell of a
[1:12:57] lot more with our transmitter. There's a lot more programming you can do, and you can get very granular as far as what you can do with your transmitter. You can do things, easily set things up. So, for example, flight modes. And one thing that I think people would understand is you can set up something called a takeoff flight mode. So you can dial it in so you have the perfect amount of flaps that come down
[1:13:26] and then you can get a little bit of crow mix in there as well where you drip your ailerons and you can change your elevator so that when you give it about half throttle you're doing like a real perfect takeoff but then maybe you would have this on a switch so when you get to certain altitude you just flow the switch and then you go into high rates. But the way I have it set up is you can actually push forward on the stick.
[1:13:52] So you push the elevator down, push the nose down a little bit, right? When it sees that, it knows it's time to switch to the next flight mode, which is high rates. And so these are the kind of things you can do with the radio. You can do that with your, these planes. And even though, you, you, you have these planes that you've been flying for a long time, you can do some really interesting, crazy things with them.
[1:14:20] The one thing that one of my buddies, the reason he bought the radio was he heard me flying the whole time and I kept having a countdown. So how much time I had left. So I never had to worry about it, never had to look down. And you can push a button and you hear how much time you have left. You push another, I have another button I push. I know how much valid frame rates I have
[1:14:40] in real time. So those are the kinds of things I like to do when I'm flying. The other thing is that when you get into the FreeSky ecosystem, the one thing we have, and this is something that if you are into flying, especially if you're toying with the idea of flying jets and turbine jets in particular, is we have pitot tubes. So those will give you your airspeed, real-time airspeed, vertical, everything. The idea is that when you're coming in for a landing,
[1:15:14] you can, like Dave's radio, he was talking about the X20RS. And so that has something called a shaker stick on it. And what you can do, if you want to move up to flying turbine jets, the idea is you want to be as close as you possibly can to stall speed as you're coming down for a landing. And you don't want to fall under the stall speed. So if you have a pitot tube and your stall speed is, let's say, 40 miles an hour. And when you get to 38 miles an hour,
[1:15:52] you'll feel your throttle start to vibrate, telling you to speed up. That's a cool feature. That's actually very cool. Yeah, because you don't know. I can't hear a thing when I'm out in the flying field half the time. Especially with several jets running and one running on the ground. Well, and when it's coming at you, it's so hard to tell speed. I mean, you don't have a frame of reference. And then you can probably, no doubt, program it to have airspeed call-outs probably, right?
[1:16:20] Yes, you have airspeed call-outs the whole time. That's a really cool feature. You do that. probably, right? Yes, you have Airspeed call-outs and the whole time. That's a really cool feature. Yeah, you do that. So the PedoTube, that is a FreeSky integrated, like it's sold by FreeSky because there's a company out there now. What is it? Oh, man, I can't think of the name of it. V-Speak? Is it V-Speak that makes some Pedo? Anyway, there's another company out there
[1:16:44] that makes these pitot tubes that you can put in your turbine-powered jets, and it'll speak different, I'll say languages, but we'll say protocols, whatever. But this is all… Integrated. So you just plug it in, and it communicates like it's supposed to. That's awesome. It does. And then we have, I know gliders, most of the people don't get too excited by gliders. That's okay. But I'm like one of the few guys who actually loves them. So we have something called,
[1:17:18] we sell variometers that are standalone or we have receivers that have variometers built into them. So variometers, into them so variometers all they do is they measure pressure the pressure air pressure and when it it's actually very accurate it will give you your absolute altitude where you're at any given point right so it'll also tell you your vertical speed and i know it doesn't sound like much, but what you get is you can turn on this really annoying tone.
[1:17:50] Oh, we're familiar with it. Well, Spectrum does something similar, and we're familiar. Yeah. So it goes down when you're starting to lose altitude. Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. Yeah. -huh. Then all of a sudden, when you get into, you're flying these gliders and you hit a thermal and man, sometimes it sounds like a video game, like you are going up and quickly. And it's really hard to tell when you're on the ground. Now the guys who fly gliders, for competition,
[1:18:23] they can't use these things but man it will teach you how to find those thermals in and it is it is a ton of fun to fly these things i fly this i have a two meter glider it's nothing fancy but it's crazy that sometimes you hit these things and you fly so high you can't see the planet anymore. Yeah, so you have that. We have things that will measure your voltage, FLVS, free sky lithium voltage sensors.
[1:18:58] And the idea behind those is that you can get your both pack and individual cell voltage as you're flying. So you can see how much, on, you can even program it. So you push a button, so you can call out and you can hear how much you have left. So you do that. I did also mention that the telemetry, the one thing we have, I like the GPS unit. What you can do is you can actually record your whole flight and you can bring them into Google earth and see your flight.
[1:19:32] That's the other thing that's really cool about it too, is you can go back and you can find the lowest point of your entire flight where you had the lowest signal and you can. So dead spots. There's a dead spot. you can like within a foot you can sell like right here is where the dead spot is that's very handy actually i like that idea yeah so yeah there's and the the things that you could do with the ethos probably what i should do is
[1:20:01] maybe that's after the show's, give you guys some links. You can actually download the Ethos Simulator and play with it. You can see what it's all about. You don't have to buy a transmitter. You can just put it on your PC and play with it and see how it all goes together. I don't know. I don't know. The thing I tell people, especially people who fly these horizon hobby planes, which are, FMS planes, those things are great. They're fantastic. I love them.
[1:20:36] If you can do yourself a favor, one thing I can convince you of, but there's nothing else I can convince you of. If you've never want to look at a free sky transmitter the rest of your life, fine with me. However, take my word for this because this will change things dramatically get off of the damn y cables on your ailerons oh we've been oh yeah absolutely yep yeah we've been separate aileron channels for years yep yeah yeah because you can set up differential and you can
[1:21:00] start to really work out adverse yeah. You can actually make these planes. Yeah, Steve, I'm looking at Ron. Steve's talking about our bind and fly stuff. Yeah. Yeah, I've been on those for a while now. Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, most of the Horizon Hobby planes, the ailerons are on one channel. Right. If you can get off of that, if you can make that just two channels you will have so much better flying experience you can really full span ailerons full span flat
[1:21:34] i mean what it like oh yeah yeah i get it and the adverse yeah when you start mixing a little bit of and these are the things i put out a number of videos people actually recognize my voice more than they recognize my face because i put out a lot of these videos as far as how to set up different things flap tutorials and all these other things for free sky and a lot of this was set up i i i didn't really know who i was talking to. In fact, my wife was really surprised.
[1:22:07] She came with me to an event in Florida, and this guy was talking about, hey, man, I love you and love your videos. And I'm like, all right, hold on a second. Tell my wife that. And she's like, oh, I have no idea who you're talking to. Actually, you're recording something, and people actually listen to you? Yes, honey. Yes, I had no idea who you're talking to. Actually, you're recording something and people actually listen to you? Yes, honey. Yes, I do.
[1:22:29] So a lot of this was, I didn't, the hardest thing is when you put videos out or you put the content out, you don't know who you're talking to. There's this one time, a couple of years ago, I was talking to a guy and he was just like, I've been in and out of the hobby for the last 20 years. Now I'm retirement age. I'm really getting back into it. And I really want to thank you because you talk slow and you go over stuff that people always thought I knew.
[1:22:53] I had no idea what the hell they're talking about. Don't know what dual rates are. Don't know what Expo is. I don't know what about your adverse yacht. But you explain it. And so like, oh, hey, I'll make your big plane fly like it's a smaller plane and then these are really neat things and so if you get into the ecosystem of free sky and it sounds like what you guys are doing right now is you're getting into better planes you're
[1:23:19] getting into like the turbines and you're you wanting more from the flying experience you can it's amazing what a radio system can do for you yeah you can make a good pilot a great pilot yeah or at least a plane that you didn't particularly love a shelf queen take it out again you can start to
[1:23:39] figure out man the rates weren't right this wasn't right that wasn't right ask around you can look around on the internet people will help you out the one thing that i did wanted to mention was kind of the i think one of the neatest experiences i had at free sky was happened at joel null last year i kept saying that the guy's a hobby, I want to meet with management. I want to meet with management. And they said, finally, like, I can't do anything. I can't do anything.
[1:24:13] And finally, they said, we can get you some time at Joe Knoll. And I said, great. And everybody, my management, their management, were all sitting around in a big circle. It was like nine of us. And everyone was looking at me. And it was like my turn like okay steve call us together what do you what's on your mind and i'm like okay let me tell you guys something well a couple things about hobby
[1:24:36] king number one when the company started the first order for hobby king was from the it's a husband-and-wife team they got $150,000 order for receivers and transmit modules from Hobby King they sat there on the kitchen table and they soldered up all the receivers and all the modules by
[1:24:57] themselves Wow yeah that's what they started, the guy who's my manager, who I just love, love this guy. He was 14. He was sitting there watching mom and dad do crazy stuff. So, but I explained to him, what it's like to be, show like, I'm, this is realistically what happened. And that plane, I talk about the Tundra. I had it in my shopping cart. And I was just like, this looks like a really cool plane. I watch videos. People send a like it.
[1:25:32] I would like to get a Tundra. I put it in my shopping cart. And I'm like, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. Or I think, let me go back and forth capitulating. Man, I'm tired. I'll wake up in the morning. Wake up in the morning, forget all about it. A couple of days later, go back. It's all sold out. I went through this three times. Finally, the last time I did it, I morning, wake up in the morning, forget all about it. A couple of days later, go back. It's all sold out.
[1:25:46] And went through this three times. Finally, the last time I did it, I said, screw it. I'm hitting the buy button. I bought it and forgot all about it. And then it was Saturday morning and my wife comes to me and I'm sitting down having breakfast. And she said, Steve, I was out in the garage this morning. I saw all the planes you have out there. This is not healthy. I think you might need some help. You really need to get
[1:26:15] rid of these things. you don't need so many planes. This is not normal. This is hoarding behavior. And I got chewed out. Like, I had an intervention for my wife on a Saturday morning and I was just, God, I was really mad, but I had to go out to the mailbox. And as I go out to the mailbox, there's a box from Hobby King, but it wasn't a normal size box. Cause
[1:26:39] the size of the, of the Tundra box, it's yeah, it's, you it's a good size yeah they package it twice the size so it's twice as fat twice as tall and when we did that i mean this is it looked like i i brought home like one of the two meter what are those the like the t28 the two two meter ones yeah those are big yeah that's what the size of the box was. And I'm like, oh my God, I'm in trouble. This is, I can't hide this.
[1:27:11] And so I said, I'm going to go walk around the site, keep really close to the house and walk around the house, go to the side entrance of the garage. And I was like, I'm walking up to the garage door and I'm like, I made it. Cause once I get, get in the garage, I could throw it somewhere and then give her the box in about a week or so. And she would never be any wiser as I opened the door. I feel the handle turn. She sees me with this huge box and she's like,
[1:27:44] we were just talking about this so that was how i started off the conversation with hobby king and i said here's the thing you guys have some great planes i love them a lot of people i know love them people aren't really into setting up models this is something that we can do for you we can actually go in there and set up the models and we can make them so you can download them better yet let's make a radio where all the models are on
[1:28:19] there and we can sell that so this would be like a really good first radio for somebody who wants their first big boy transmitter. And they were like, okay, well, we'll think about it. That sounds good. And then sure enough, they did it. And that's called the Turnigy X14. And it has 30 models. The reason it has 30 models on there is because 34 models on there. Actually, they were putting more on every single, every few weeks it seems like they're putting out a new plane.
[1:28:50] The reason why this happened was I came up with this idea. Like they bought it and they finally, we got the radio together and they were done. And then my management said, okay, the radios are done. We want these things out of the warehouse. Call hobby king get them out of here and i'm like we have to put model files on there yeah i know so do that and like just like that yeah i mean i can come up with something
[1:29:19] but it's it's gonna be pretty generic and i happened to talk to a guy that was one of our clients. And he said, he came out of the entertainment industry and he said, yeah, I'd like to come work for you guys. And I said, oh, great. Yeah, I think it would be a great fit for the company. And he said, yeah, OK. And I talked to him about it. As soon as I heard about this project, we were talking about this for maybe a month of him coming to work for us.
[1:29:45] As soon as I heard I had to get these models, all these radios out of the warehouse, I called him up again. And he was still like back trying to figure out if he wanted to come to work for us or not. And he's like, yeah, I think I'm gonna come to work for you, but I need like a couple months off. I say, okay, Jose, that's great. I need you to show up on Monday. We're starting. And what he did was the team pilot from Hobby King Stewart. So great guy, a lot of fun,
[1:30:15] high energy guy. He said, he came up to me at Joe Knoll for the first time I met him he said i got a x x9 and so it's the old tyrannus x9d and i'm like cool he goes this is from 2015. yeah great i've never updated once no i'm like what no i've never updated we i have all the models for all the planes i've flown over the last 10 years on this
[1:30:44] transmitter and i so when we got this project together he said i can get you all the models for all the planes that have flown over the last 10 years on this transmitter. And so when we got this project together, he said, I can get you all the model files. And Jose's like, that would save us so much time.
[1:31:01] But we had no way of, talking about being resourceful, we didn't have anything that would read the model files because this radio was so old. So what I did is I remembered somebody had returned a radio and I remember seeing an email on the box. It was dated 2015. I said, this just might work. And we got it out. And from there, we're able to read the model files from that transmitter. From that, we were able to program the entire radio for all the different models that he had.
[1:31:24] That's crazy yeah so it is and we gave it back to him we gave it to like for the guys he actually jose is so good at this he actually figured out all the mistakes they've made he figured out what things were wrong he double checked this i don't think this looks right but so we gave it to back to the team pilots go fly these planes we gave it to other to the team pilots, go fly these planes. We gave it to other people who worked at Free Sky and some of their friends.
[1:31:50] I'm not Free Sky, but Hobby King. And they everyone took it and said, this is really great. This I can't believe how well this thing works. So that's kind of it's I know it's interesting because i i guess i get it some of those turn into radios don't have the best reputation these things like if you can figure out how to make one plane fly the rest of them are all the same that's all the same switch layouts so it's a so it's a
[1:32:20] is it branded turnigy yes it's branded Turnigy radio that's basically built and programmed by Freesky. Yes. Nice. With all their planes. Yeah, that's awesome. It is really… They got dab modes. Yeah. It even has the Super Takano. I don't know if you've ever seen that plane. Yeah, we saw it last year. Yeah, that was really nice. That is a cool plane. It's in there. So if you can figure out how to fly a Tundra, and if you are so daring, you can fly the Super Takano.
[1:32:51] It's the same switch pattern as everything else. That is nice. Yes. Voice call-outs, timers, everything. So, yeah. And it still has the programmability of the standard Ethos system. Is that correct? The programmability of a standard Ethos system? Yes, it does. Yeah, so you can go in and tweak something if it was for say a little bit off for your taste and you want to change a switch you can do that yes exactly you can change switches
[1:33:14] you can change rates you can do whatever you feel like in the transmitter it is full ethos and i put that out there for a couple reasons The reason I was excited about it was number one, I always felt like when people get excited about their first plane, like they go to the hobby store and like, I'm going to buy this plane and I'm going to buy this timber and I'm going to take it home and I'm going to go fly it. And they don't want to sit down and really have to learn how to set up dual
[1:33:44] rates expoo how to get the switches to work and everything else like that that was something i thought spectrum did a great job of it's kind of like you can get out there and start flying right away with and my belief is that when you get started with something and you have a good experience with it good you're probably going to stick with it a bit longer it's something that if you go out there and you have your
[1:34:13] ailerons reversed and you go out and you fly and you crash your plane and it's destroying a million pieces well you're done with the hobby yeah so this is basically a quick start. Right. To get you up and going. The other thing is, if you are that guy who gets the 10 planes and decides he wants an EDF jet, and then a year from now he wants a turbine jet, and you get the X20 Pro, well, guess what? All the receivers you have on all these planes will work for the X20 Pro as well. Nice.
[1:34:43] Yeah, that's cool. So, yeah, it's a neat experience i think across the board it really a lot of it's starting to catch on now a lot of people like it it might not be for somebody who is new but i mean who's like been flying for all these years like we have but somebody who's in the first year, second year, they're kind of like, it always kind of starts out the same. They get someone's old DX six, they start off with it. And they're like,
[1:35:16] I'm out of models. I can't put him, I have to get another transmitter. these thing people ask me models will hold. And the answer people ask, how many models will it hold? And the answer is more planes than your wife will ever let in your house. The memory on this RS is massive. Yes. Yeah. Yours has eight gigabytes of memory. And I've never seen it filled up more than 10% of the way. Yeah, that's a lot. Built for the future. Yeah. I mean, so there's,
[1:35:48] there's been a number of these like wake up moments. The other one that I had was I, the whole thing about rotor flight, I had one guy that is a field rep for us. And I said, Hey, Dave, do me a favor. Can you go out and I'm sorry, Scott, Scott, can you go out and i'm sorry scott scott can you go out and get one of these roto flights i don't know much about it people are kind of excited about it and he sat down and he said listen
[1:36:12] i didn't think what i fly i fly scale helicopters i don't fly the little 400 goose guy helicopters my helicopters are ten thousand dollars and up and he said i had a formula that i use and i'm like okay and he's like i fly everything with bavarian cortex it works perfect i've been flying for the last 10 years not interested in changing at one iota this is part of what i do i'm like okay i understand thanks. And then he called me up a couple days later.
[1:36:48] All right, here, I got one helicopter I can sacrifice. I know I have to be a team player, so yeah, I'm going to do it. And, but I'm going to learn everything there is before I go out and fly this thing. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. No, this guy is not normal he had to have conversations with the developers of rotor flight okay yeah that deep yeah he's that deep into it so he said okay i
[1:37:16] got it in i gotta work i'm gonna take it out we're gonna fly i think we'll have a good day to fly next tuesday and i'll let how it goes. Didn't hear back to him until Friday. All right. So how'd it go? Okay. Here's the deal. I'm getting rid of all my cortex and I'm only going to fly rotor flight from this point on. So it is that much better. That's the thing that
[1:37:39] the, it's starting to catch on right now. If you go to your flying field and you talk to someone about rotor flight, they're probably a helicopter guy. I'd say about a quarter of them have heard of it before. Yeah, I've heard some good things about it. Yeah, I don't know much about it.
[1:38:05] time next year, every one of those guys has heard, will have heard of it and they've know plenty of their friends are switching to it. And if they haven't switched to it, they will switch to it. It's that kind of, it's very revolutionary. So that's kind of the way I always kind of felt about the FreeSky transmitters as well. As much as the selling points there are for the FreeSky transmitter, I've always kind
[1:38:22] of felt like the things that it can do, the things, the big selling points there are for the free sky transmitter i always kind of felt like the things that it can do the things the big selling points the things that people are be excited about five years from now are things that have not been developed yet and i think they're going to be amazing lewis scripts where it's just one of those things where it's like oh my god i have to have that and never so- The ever expanding universe.
[1:38:46] Yeah, the ever expanding universe. So that's why, what I love right now about FreeSky is we have really nice growth. It's not over the top where everything is like, there's more business we can handle. I always worry about that, about having fad business because it all comes at once. And then you would get hit up all the time for help. And there's not enough people to help. We have this, universe of people.
[1:39:14] I don't know, Dave, if you've been on the Ethos, FR Sky, official Free Sky Ethos group. No, I've spent a lot of time on YouTube University. Okay. Those are good too but the the ethos group is really interesting to the extent where you have a really weird problem and maybe it's something that only a very small percent of the people would understand
[1:39:41] you can write it wake up in the middle of the night go to the bathroom i'm going to write a quick message post any help with this by the time, wake up in the middle of the night, go to the bathroom. I'm going to write a quick message, post any help with this. By the time you wake up in the morning, there's four answers. And so it is really, we have the help is online. RC Group's also great help. And you did mention YouTube University. Have you found that you're able to learn a lot
[1:40:06] from that everything i've done so far i've learned from it if i've had a question on how to do something the hardest thing i've had to do so far and i'm still programming one of 50 aircraft in there hardest thing i've had to do so far is figure out differential thrust and i went and hit a couple videos on differential thrust and boom, bang, boom, it's working. Yeah, it was probably a Jose video. Probably, yeah. There was a couple of them. Yeah, so they're out there.
[1:40:35] That's kind of what happened when I first started with the company. We had, I think a total of 12 videos I can find on Ethos. And I said, I got to get some guys who have a following to make videos. And we got radios to them. And the first thing I learned about guys who have followings on YouTube is they're really interested in the things they're interested in. And we'll make a couple like basic videos, but most of it are just kind of things that aren't
[1:41:02] really great for the general public. So I didn't really want to be the guy to make videos, but there was, I'm not the only guy who makes videos, but it was just kind of a matter of necessity. We need a real basic flap video, explain how flaps work. So I put the first one out. Now, the other thing that's really bad about YouTube is that if a video is watched over time and it has a lot of views, it will come up first in the search.
[1:41:33] So the way we do flaps now is different three years later than what we did back in 2022. But those videos come up first. And it's like I want to tell them like yeah i even put notes in there hey this is old information go follow this link to something better but yeah that's kind of how everything works with youtube it's whatever is popular and gets the most views kind of keeps on getting the most views yeah i don't know how many bind videos are out there
[1:42:03] it's like every time i turn it on there's more bind don't know how many bind videos are out there. It's like, every time I turn it on, there's more bind videos. It's like, I know how to bind a receiver. Oh God. I know. And we get people call up and take them through that. And like, how do you read, what's this whole thing about register? What about buying? And I'm like, Oh my God, there's thousand videos on that. So that's kind of why I try to do is get information to people.
[1:42:25] Here's all the questions you're going to have over the next three months. Here's a document. I'll tell you where all the answers are. Yeah. That's the best way to do it. So, yeah, that's, it's a, it's, it's a wonderful thing. Yeah. Absolutely love the system. It's working great. Easy to pick up on. I didn't have any real issues doing it. First airplane took me like six hours of programming it. After that, it takes about the same amount of time as it did to put it into Spectrum.
[1:42:52] So there you go. That's not bad. That's great. And then the other two guys are, you guys are still in Spectrum. I think a lot of guys are kind of like, if you don't have a reason to switch and you're happy with what you got there's really you're not there's no real incentive to switch yeah well go ahead i was gonna say i i love this because dave has taken the step away so we will get to kind of learn off of
[1:43:16] what he does without spending the time and effort to do it on our own does that make sense yeah yeah some of that stuff's going to transition over to spectrum as well for you guys yeah yeah so he's the first one in well but i'm looking to first one anyway you can say it that way sure but yeah he's that's i think over the years there's been a
[1:43:44] number of systems where you have something that really meets the moment, and you're fully invested in that system, and then over time, it doesn't meet the moment anymore. That's where I was with my system. I had the DX system. I've got 50 Spectrum receivers plus, and that was the holdback for me changing systems because it was time to upgrade from the DX. It was getting old in a tooth, but I had 50 Spectrum receivers, and I didn't want to have to buy 50 new whatever receivers.
[1:44:12] And I saw that you had the multi-module, and it worked perfectly with Spectrum, and that was really the deciding factor. It's like, okay, I can do this. I currently own, I think, four FreeSky receivers, and everything else that I'm flying is Spectrum. Nice. And eventually, as those Spectrum receivers, they'll get washed out and replaced with FreeSky receivers. As you get new planes and all that kind of stuff, right? As I get new planes, yeah.
[1:44:34] I'm not going to buy any more Spectrum receivers, unless I happen to just get a really good deal on one. Did I ever tell you about the Spectrum holiday? I'm sorry, again? There's a a spectrum vacation you can take oh so what you do is you sell all those spectrum receivers and you buy free sky receivers and all the money that you save because you then make money in the whole transition process you can actually take a nice
[1:45:00] vacation oh yeah yes there you go dave do that you can come to Joan all next year. Yeah, there you go. That'll work. I, yeah, I'm not going to Joan all guys. Sorry. That's a good thing. I will say about spectrum, those receivers get people, those things sell exceptionally well. I just, it's, I love them there. I love the blue shirt guys. They're always at all the events I go to, have a great relationship with them.
[1:45:25] I mean, if people like what they're flying, I don't want them to change. I'm like, if they don't see a need to change, why change? But there's just, over the years, there's been more and more need to change. Something is not right. Something's not adding up. I want this. I need more security. I need a better up. I want this. I need more security. I need a better link. I want more telemetry. I want to have what my airspeed is.
[1:45:52] You never really know what you want until you want it. Yes. That's exactly it. That's true. That's wisdom. I'm cheap. I'm looking at your prices. it's like i can get a 10 channel receiver for less than what i'm paying for a six channel and get more it's got it's got everything on it so i mean that was another big selling point for me is more for less yeah yeah i get it i totally get it yeah there, and the thing is that it's always what I hear is,
[1:46:29] sometimes I'll go to a field and we've never been there as a company. And then there's 10 guys flying free sky. And I'm like, how the hell did this happen? And what I find is there's a guy like Dave who showed up there. And then he's figured it out. I always talk about there's four steps to free sky. The first step is it's cheap enough. It looks good. I might as well buy it. The second, yeah. Okay. There you are right there. Well, you're about to interface too, which is, Oh my God,
[1:47:00] I hate this thing. I would ask for my money back, but knowing that it still exists is wrong. I have to destroy it with fire. You never had that stage. I went from- That's what he said. You're going to get into it, I guess. I went immediately from, oh, this is kind of new to, I love this thing. Good, because you went right to four. Because stage three is, I'm starting to get it. This isn't so bad
[1:47:25] in stage four you're at the flying field showing everyone what you can do yeah and so and we get i mean seriously i get messages from people like a month into the system month and a half in i don't my name is so and so i'm in love with your radio system i don't know i have to be part of your company i don't know, but I have to do something. I got to be a team pilot, or something like that. We get that. And people get very passionate about it. And that's kind of cool.
[1:47:53] In the RC hobby, people get passionate about their radios. They get passionate about their motors, the planes they fly. That's what I just love about it. Yeah. And, like, so the radio Dave got is very impressive it looks nice it feels good in the hand it's very responsive I can't say anything bad about it but what I will say is Dave had a very low bar that he was coming from with the DX9 from 2014 or whatever it was wow so what he I mean moving up to a computer radio just from anything
[1:48:24] non-computerized is amazing. Really, no matter what the radio is. Right. I mean, you're kind of feeling what I'm getting at. Like the first time we went to a computer radio over the DX8 that I had, it was like. Well, I mean, the DXs were computer radios. Well, what I'm talking about. Like the touchscreens. Yeah, with the touchscreen, with the new IX protocol or whatever they're calling it. Yeah. And it turns on really fast, unlike certain other.
[1:48:50] Well, I took them, IX12 was not. IX12 was not great. Not a great radio, no. It still has the same, once it's up and running, once you've made it past the boot screen, it operates fine. How many minutes is that? It's several. Four or five, something like that, right. And they're not supporting it anymore. So, that's, and I think that's another reason that may influence people to go away from one brand when it's time to upgrade.
[1:49:20] Yeah, and it was time for Dave to upgrade. There are other options out there, and I just love this. And what? The red doesn't hurt. Yeah, they're good-looking radios. And I really like the fact that the screen is on top. I do, too. That's a good placement for the screen on it. Yeah, they're all touchscreen except the X14. Yeah. Cool. Very awesome. Well, Steve, I think we're just about done. Oh, we're just getting started. We've got a couple more hours. Go ahead.
[1:49:48] You guys go get some dinner. We'll come back in about 20 minutes, half hour. We'll keep going for another two or three hours. I can't wait to talk to everybody. I honestly can't wait to take phone calls. Yep, great. Well, in two weeks, right? When this airs. There you go. Yeah. By the way, Joe and all, I can't wait to meet you. I look forward to meet you
[1:50:11] i wish we could have had more time at toledo i'm glad dave found time to go talk to you but with the racing and all the other stuff we were doing we just for some reason couldn't couldn't make the time but yeah we'll have a we'll have a whole we'll have a whole week yeah you're gonna be there the whole week steve yeah we're showing up saturday we'll be there till friday Steve? Yeah, we're showing up Saturday. We'll be there till Friday. Nice. Okay. So yeah, Dave said,
[1:50:31] you sure you want to come on? We got a couple of spectrum guys on the show who just love their spectrum transmitters. And I said, let me at them. I was going to say, it doesn't mean I can't like and support other things. Like, yeah, that's great. You guys have been wonderful. At the end of the day, right? At the end of the day, at the end of the day these are toy airplanes
[1:50:51] yeah it's hard to sometimes maybe we get it we take it a little too seriously but at the end of the day they're toy airplanes and i think we're all out for the same thing just to have some fun yeah yeah i like that that's it you're there with your friends your buddies and it's just like my wife has never liked any of my groups of friends I've had over the years. She'll come out to the flying field. She loves everybody. Oh, yeah? That's awesome. Yeah.
[1:51:13] It's just kind of. Yeah, it's great. Yeah. Thanks for having me. A good group of guys that you find to fly with. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, Steve, thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me last words anything you want to say let's have fun at joan hall yes please don't rain yes yeah we always get one or two days i had enough of the mud last year oh yeah you never
[1:51:39] know yeah it's going to be a great week no matter what everyone come to toledo next year we're going to have even more fun. Yes. We're already planning that. Hopefully all of us can make it. But we'll see. Looking forward to seeing you again, Steve. Yeah. Anyway, thanks for being on. And like I said, we will talk at Joan Hall and go on from there. So until next time, I am Ron. I'm Tom. And I'm Dave. And I'm still Steve. Right on. Good night, everybody. Good night.
[1:52:09] We hope you enjoyed this episode of the RC Plane Lab podcast. For topic suggestions, to ask questions, or to give any feedback, connect with us at rcplanelab.com or email us direct at either ron at rcplanelab.com or tom at rcplanelab.com. You can also text us or leave us a voicemail at 818-351-9846. Please subscribe, rate, and review us on your favorite podcast app. Until next time, may your landings be gentle.
