Old 72 to new 2.4 upgrade

[Mauiboy]

LOL - I know..

I would not suggest a Radiodisaster. LOL

If you like, I'll send you an Ethos radio to see if you like it or not. I suspect you will not.I just did this for one of my locals that flies old Hitec radios with FrSky RF. I showed him some things in the radio and told him to take it home and play with it, see it it grows on him. He did, but don't think he even turned it on. Much like you he is perfectly happy with that setup. Can't argue that.

With this said - Folks may want to stock up on XHT conversion modules and ACCST receivers while you can. FrSky has already run out the XJT modules. FrSky is phasing them out and there is not enough demand for me to keep them in production any longer. I do not think you will see a replacement for the XHT either. I think we can keep the X8R and X4R in production for a while.. (I have over 300 X4R in stock right now, that is a few years supply.)

Ethos is what I consider the very best programming we have ever seen on a radio, but it is different than you are used to. When we sold nothing but OpenTX radios (same thing as Edge TX) we had about a 20% return rate as they are rather difficult for some folks to adapt to. With Ethos our return rate is pretty much zero, it is that good.

As the previous poster stated, once you have your first model setup, you can pretty much copy it and use it for a base to build your next model off of. This is really handy for flapped models.

Very interesting. Ethos.

 

[Wayne]

Hi Wayne - any idea when you'll have XHT conversion modules again?

Sorry, just got word - FrSky has run out of these and they have been discontinued. I think we were about the lost shop still buying them from FrSky.

We could get them put back into production, but would need to do a go fund me sort of thing as I'd need folks to commit to buying a couple of hundred of them. We can do this if there is enough interest.

 

[Wayne]

OK. - So was just writing an email to a customer looking to upgrade a vintage radio and thought I'd post here about some possible workarounds.

1. If you can find an XHT on the internet somewhere, go for that. Pretty easy solution.
2. An XJT module can be used with a little wiring. It is the same board as the XHT, just without some of the wires, etc.
3. Maybe an XJT Lite module can be used? I'm not sure, anyone know?

While an older DJT or DFT module could also be used, you will be very limited to receiver options with these older modules.

Some folks are still using the old V8 modules. These are super old and have NO receiver options anymore.

 

[GardenGate]

OK. - So was just writing an email to a customer looking to upgrade a vintage radio and thought I'd post here about some possible workarounds.

1. If you can find an XHT on the internet somewhere, go for that. Pretty easy solution.
2. An XJT module can be used with a little wiring. It is the same board as the XHT, just without some of the wires, etc.
3. Maybe an XJT Lite module can be used? I'm not sure, anyone know?

While an older DJT or DFT module could also be used, you will be very limited to receiver options with these older modules.

Some folks are still using the old V8 modules. These are super old and have NO receiver options anymore.

hi @Wayne :
I still see new FrSky V8 receivers for sale - did FrSky stop making those too (as those still work with the old V8 transmitter modules)?

I can completely understand that FrSky is moving/has moved away from ACCST and hence probably isn't interested in making these legacy modules (and receivers) anymore. I'm having a tough time finding XHT modules and even new XJT modules on the Web for sale anymore, only used ones popping up from time to time. I'm pretty sure the XJT Lite modules can't be used with retro conversions as those will only take serial input (a digital signal), not the PPM signal from the encoders from vintage radios (unless someone grafts a board that runs OpenTX into the old transmitter).

Has FrSky had any thought to offering DIY modules that would still take PPM signals and transmit ACCESS protocol or their latest tech? I can understand they don't want to potentially cannibalize their transmitter sales, but perhaps that would be offset by additional receiver sales? I'm on a private FB group of folks interested in converting old transmitters to 2.4 Ghz which has over 2.5K members - even if that absolute number isn't huge, it isn't trivial either. Right now, AFAIK, the only DIY module that's readily available is from LemonRX for DSMX/DSM2, so it won't work with FrSky receivers.

 

[Wayne]

In general FrSky will continue to produce things as long as they are selling decently. The sales of all of these items had dropped to a very low level. Even though Aloft was well known for the XHT for example, we still only sold a handful of them a month. I seriously doubt many other shops had been stalking them at all.

We have always stocked a much larger range of FrSky products than anyone else in the country. Most places stock some of the transmitters and some of the receivers and maybe a couple of sensors. More recently we have also cut down on the range some, but this is mostly due to the expense of stocking so many different colors and variations on the transmitters. When pretty much every transmitter comes in a standard and an S version, and each of those are in 3 or 4 colors.. It gets very expensive for a small shop to offer them all. Even FrSky falls victim to this, and this is why they have purged many of the slow moving items as they sell out.