Well; I've taken a giant leap of faith and retired my faithful JR 9303 in favour of a new Futaba T14SG.  I'll pick up the radio tomorrow and start the process of learning a new programming language

As it turned out the decision to change wasn't that hard.  The Futaba is feature rich at a good price point.  And there are lots of receivers that I can choose from depending on what I want to control on the model (straight and level flight woud be nice).
Plus, now I'll be able to annoy the bejeepers out of everyone at the field with an endless barrage of programming questions.  For example I'm now trying to figure out how to set up three position flaps (up, down 30 degrees, down full) on a single switch.  Heres part of what is written on the Futaba web site under FAQ:

I would like to set up flaps that move a certain percentage when I flip a switch to center, and then move more when I flip the same switch full down? Can you help me?

Yes, we'll start as if you had nothing set up yet.
1.The first thing you would need to do is set up your model as 2Ail+2Flp.
2.Now go to Camber mix and make this active.
3.Cursor over to your RATE and set Ail as +100% on Rate 1 and Ail2 as +100% on Rate 1.
4.Hit RTN to back out and cursor to FLAP, press RTN and set your flaps as you did in the above step.
5.Press RTN and then tap MDL twice.
6.You can now go back in and set any Elevator rates if you desire.

We need to go in and create two Offset mixes with both of these on the same switch but with different rates.
1.Go into your Prog. Mix menu, scroll down to Mix 1, and tap RTN, use your finger to scroll to the 2nd page and activate this mix.
2.Now scroll down to Master and select H/W Select. When you do this it will take you to the Switch Selection page. For reference I used Switch G for my mix.
3.Once you have selected the switch that you want to be the "master" of this mix.
4.Scroll down to Slave and select Flap. To the right of the slave channel you will see the word OFF, you will want to highlight this and using the cursor, change this to a plus sign (+). This is your Link option and what this does is it tells both flaps that if this switch does something to one flap, it needs to do it to both flaps.

Now go back up to the top of this page and to the right of your ACT selection, you will see two dashes (- -), tap RTN and go into this menu.
1.This is the menu where you will select the On/Off selection for the switch you chose for your flap operation.
2.Simply scroll down to the 3 position switch of your choice (for our use, we set ours to SG) press the RTN button to select the switch, then cursor over to ON/OFF. Tap RTN once and you will be in the screen to select the switch position to activate the flaps. We chose the Center Position as On.
3.Tap MDL twice to take you back to the Model menu.



I'm not about to change my mind and stick with JR, but right now my head hurts.

Mike

Shane Morse wrote on Feb 28^th, 2013 at 1:33am:

Like Shane says, I found that radio very easy to use. Once you get used to the touch switch. A good third of that stuff are question the radio need answered so it will know the type of model your setting up.It need to know this so it can allocate channel for the job. Very powerful system.

I've been reading the manual on-line and some of the programming is starting to make sense.  I'll pick it up today and start attacking the learning curve.

The little touch sensitive pad is probably the feature that I least like.  My JR used a roller to control the cursor.  It was just too easy to use; roll the control till the cursor highlighted what you wanted, then push the roller to 'select'.  I know that after time I'll get used to the touch pad (something like an iPad), but I may end up muttering under my breath at the beginning.

That having been said, I'm looking forward finally getting 'in step' with the majority of the flyers at the field and having a radio that will allow me to fly the little park flyers that have become so popular.  Its a very capable radio that will surely do everything that I need; and telemetry will be just a hoot to play with.  I'm always wondering what my receiver voltage is.  Now my model will send a few data frames to my transmitter and I'll have the information I need.  That will be cool.

Grant:

I was happy to read that Kevin also chose the T14SG.  Now there will be two of us working our way through the logic map.

Mike

Fingers wrote on Feb 28^th, 2013 at 9:38am:



Hi Sandy:

Life would be dull without a few mysteries 

Mike

When I first got my 8FG I was pulling my hair out too. It took awhile to get used to, but by the second setup I had it figured out. It's a great system as Al said, and very powerful.  I am picking up my 14SG in a few days from John 

LOL!  By the time flying starts up again, Mike will be the go to guy for the new 14!

I've been playing with the radio.  This morning I set up a new model with dual aileron servos, a single flap servo, and a gear servo.  I was able to get everything set up fine with the controls on the switches and slides that I wanted.  That was good, however, I did encounter a problem with the telemetry.  Telemetry worked just fine with the model that was set up in the radio as Model 1. It continued to work when I changed Model 1 to have dual aileron servos, a gear servo, and a flap servo.  This required that I move the battery connection from position 7 to position 8 on the receiver, however, everything including telemetry worked. But, when I set up a new model (dual aileron servos, a single flap servo, and a gear servo) with the battery connected to port 8 all of the controls work just fine but the receiver does not send telemetry data to the transmitter.  So, there is a setting buried somewhere that I need to find and reconfigure 

Yes this is a feature of this radio,  it has model match capability, some of the earlier FASST systems did not however.

Shane Morse wrote on Mar 2^nd, 2013 at 12:55am:


So earlier systems may have assumed that any given receiver would be associated with only one model??  That sorta makes sense, but I must say that I like using the receiver complete with a pile of servos as an aid while I climb the learning curve.  The servo monitor is quite helpful but I still like seeing real servos jump around on my desk.