VBAR Control Transmitter

[OICU812]

Originally Posted by Jdarc1

Nothing would be better than to be able to program your VBAR on the fly. The tweaking would be endless and hassle free. You would have to plug anything in or remove a canopy.I use the VBAR remote controller which is much better than a laptop but this would be great. As far as the radio is concerned, I fly a JR12x which I fly because I like the feel and weight of the radio and JR has been my radio of choice for years but I would make a change if the radio had a nice feel in your hands and had nice gimbals.

And rightfully so it has to feel good for "you". Including myself this is important it will fit and feel well for me or it will not. All tech aside good point.

[Jdarc1]

I personally would like telemetry, a feature that my 12X does not have. I am attending the local Wram show on Friday where I was ready to pull the trigger on a JETI radio because of the telemetry. Because I love my VBARS I think I'll wait and see what the price point is
And how well the new transmitter feels before I make a decision. Being able to make vbar adjustments from my TX is an added bonus. Maybe Dave D. can shed some light and let us know how Kyle likes the TX if he's been using it.

[mkovalcson]

Originally Posted by Jdarc1

I personally would like telemetry, a feature that my 12X does not have. I am attending the local Wram show on Friday where I was ready to pull the trigger on a JETI radio because of the telemetry. Because I love my VBARS I think I'll wait and see what the price point is
And how well the new transmitter feels before I make a decision. Being able to make vbar adjustments from my TX is an added bonus. Maybe Dave D. can shed some light and let us know how Kyle likes the TX if he's been using it.

Make sure the Mikado TX can get telemetry data from your Kontronik ESC's.

[deepak]

Id congratulate Mikado on the concept. Those of us who have a fleet of helis using vbar would benefit most upon its release. Unfortunately I just went jetti. May be I should have held on a little longer. Jetti before the release of the mikado transmitter may have been the wrong choice seeing that mikado will have airplane stuff and other telemetry shortly, maybe I made a mistake. Perhaps in a few years when I wish to up grade it would be a serious contender.
Wish they had released this info a few weeks ago I would have gone mikados way. Good quality product and service second to none!
d

[dahld]

Q: "Maybe Dave D. can shed some light and let us know how Kyle likes the TX if he's been using it."

A: Kyle has been flying the radio secretly for quite some time now. Other than a slight difference in the physical shape and feel from the JR's he'd been using for years, the switch was uneventful. The system's programming is simple, especially for the experienced V-Bar user, the radio link has been flawless, and Kyle is confident in the system, and will be flying it in his Logo 700's and 480 at the Rotor Live Show and competition in Germany two weeks from now.

(-: Dave

[dahld]

@ mkovalcson,

Your comment, "Assuming the VBar Control panel actually works worth a squat,..."

Where do you get the motivation to make statements like this, when you have no basis for making it? You are becoming the classic guy on the forums we all at some point or another talk about as being a jerk. Here's why...

I've been monitoring the forums all day out of curiosity. You have on multiple occasions on both HF and RR let us all know over and over and over again how you think V-Control is pretty much a worthless product, and how much you just love Jeti.

OK, you've convinced us all exactly how you feel. We get it. And you are entitled to your opinion. But it's getting old. Can you find something else to do, other than make ridiculous statements like the one you made that I quoted above about things you have (for some reason), quickly acquired an obvious bias against.

Sorry to the rest of you all for my spouting off. I couldn't take it anymore.

Dave

[JMoto84]

Originally Posted by mkovalcson

I'm going to shut up now.

What happened there? 7 post in this thread since?

We get it, you like your super awesome Jeti and all other radios be damned!

Geez.

Anyway, this new Mikado Tx looks seriously sweet!!

[mahbouni]

When I started the other thread it was supposed to be a bit of speculative fun and I never expected it to last so long. When I first saw the Vbar Control announcement I was all excited and thought this is really cool. After reading a lot of other people's comments I started to think about it a bit more.

My initial thoughts were "can this replace what I already have"? The answer to that question is no. The problem is I fly indoor models like 130X and mCPX BL. During winter months I fly at indoor clubs. Currently I have an (oldskool) JR DSX9 V2. That's a UK equivalent of an X9503. With that I fly all my Vbar models using Spektrum sats and I can just bind to my indoor models. I also have a few planes all with Spektrum RXs. So unless this radio will support DSM2 I'm not going to be able to use it exclusively and I will have to keep my good old JR. When the Futaba 18MZ came out I really wanted one but it was this very argument that made me decide to keep what I have and wait for something even better. Vbar Control still offers a lot of tempting goodies, so it may come down to price that determines my final decision.

From my signature you can tell that I'm a big Mikado fan. All of my bigger models have Vbar so I'm probably better positioned to use this radio than most of my flying buddies. I fly at a few clubs in the UK and I do see a lot of Vbars but most of the less experienced flyers tend to opt for cheaper FBL systems like BeastX or even Align. Of those that do fly Vbar I meet few people who can actually set it up correctly. Often I set up Vbars for other flyers. Either they or myself take a laptop to the field. Another thing is often I find myself updating their Vbar to the latest firmware or upgrading it to Pro at the field. I connect my laptop to the internet via my pone and we download the latest firmware there and then. I'm not sure how this will be possible with Vbar Control. Anyway, I do an initial setup followed by a few tweaks and then they go fly. Its very rare that they ever change the setup again. It just works and they don't have any need to tweak. I think I'm in a minority of people that often make small adjustments now and again.

Then I started thinking about the future potential of this radio and what sort of things I'd like to do with it. I have a lot of helis with Vbar and one thing I find a chore is keeping the settings the same across all my helis. I usually fly one heli a lot and the other not so much for a while. As I make Vbar adjustments to the one I'm flying often, the others get left behind and I forget what settings I had. It would be really cool if I could see all my models on one page with the differences highlighted. I'm talking about dynamic parameters like Style, Agility, Paddle Sim, Expo and so on. This made me think about how I could share my setup with other people. Perhaps Vbar Control could be synchronized to my registered Vbars in Vtsabi.info via PC and USB cable. There I could sync all my models from my radio to my account online, and perhaps I could share my setups publicly or to other users who I choose. I'd love to be able to browse Kyle's setups. I'd also like to have variations of the same setup and I'd like to be able to augment them with non Vbar related info like what motor, pinion and blades I'm using. I'm sure there are loads of other possibilities but this is just one that i think would be a winner for me.

[mkovalcson]

Originally Posted by dahld

@ mkovalcson,

Your comment, "Assuming the VBar Control panel actually works worth a squat,..."

Where do you get the motivation to make statements like this, when you have no basis for making it? You are becoming the classic guy on the forums we all at some point or another talk about as being a jerk. Here's why...

I've been monitoring the forums all day out of curiosity. You have on multiple occasions on both HF and RR let us all know over and over and over again how you think V-Control is pretty much a worthless product, and how much you just love Jeti.

OK, you've convinced us all exactly how you feel. We get it. And you are entitled to your opinion. But it's getting old. Can you find something else to do, other than make ridiculous statements like the one you made that I quoted above about things you have (for some reason), quickly acquired an obvious bias against.

Sorry to the rest of you all for my spouting off. I couldn't take it anymore.

Dave

Dave,

You might want to check to see who is posting on RR because it wasn't me unless someone hijacked an account that I never use or was quoting posts I made on HF.

Otherwise your comments are fair. My apologies.

[marcosp]

Originally Posted by abanihani

You know Marcos with Helicommand you can assign pretty much any function to a knob and tweek it in real time as you fly to get for example the head or tail gain adjusted without even landing, so nothing revolutionary here at all. All what i see is no need for PC to bring to the field, nothing really that would make us ditch our Tx .

Hi Ahmad!!! Can you put Style, Agility or Stop Gain on a nob? Can you change stop gains with a flight condition or mix Style with say elevator? Higher Style at center and exponentially lower towards the limits.

I need some insight here, please correct me if I am wrong. Being that the normal way of controlling a FBL or old Gyro parameter is using a channel (5 for gain or banks, 9 and 10 on Futaba for Ail and Ele gain), isn't it a BIG difference that this radio controls the whole Vbar through telemetry? Is that using a sequential stream? It's like 10 or 15 specialized channels for Vbar only in a dual path stream? Is it limitless then? Has the UDI development had anything to do with this??? It's a brand new avenue, sort of what Jeti has done to program their ESCs from the radio, only this time it's the whole FBL unit.

Can you imagine a Mikado ESC and having the complete heli programable and mixable from the radio + full power system telemetry + FBL info telemetry in realtime?!?

Each day more questions, and more interest.

[SimStream]

Mmm chargeable updates would worry me to be honest.

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

[beans07]

Looks pretty cool to me.

I have a little laptop, bluetooth via app on android and a control panel and to be honest rarely use any at the field. Maybe for the first 3-4 flights whilst dialing the heli in.

Of late I have slowly converted a few helis over to the MSH Brain. I am trying to start a war but if Mikado can fix the governor for nitro helis and make it more snappy I may just keep my vbars and buy one of these radio's. Otherwise I will stick with the Futaba 14SG.

[Laughingstill]

Make it more snappy???? What do you mean?

[Hpsan]

All in all the new V-Bar controll is a great idea.….

BUT: unfortunately I have no V-Bar on my Logo 600 SX. I am running a BD HC3 SX. Why: the V-Bar has no auto level bail out. I am flying my Logo since about one year. It is my first Heli and I had at least 10-15 successful rescues during the last 12 months. That saved really a lot of my money.

Here are some of my wishes I would like to address to our suppliers:

1): it would be really great if I could update my MPX Royal Pro Transmitter by Software from BD - similar to the new V-Bar Control Software - enabling me to control my HC3 SX by my MPX Transmitter.

2): if I would have decided for a V-Bar instead of my HC3 SX it would be great as well if Mikado would offer the V-Bar Controll Software for my MPX Transmitter.

3): if it would have an auto level bail out capability I would even consider buying a V-Bar Transmitter and a V-Bar ….

4): I know this is wishful thinking - what we really need in the market will be an open 2.4 GHz standard including a unique Transmitter operating system standard (like let’s say Android for handhelds) enabling us to install software like Mikado’s V-Bar Control on our different Transmitters. Furthermore we need an international bus standard like Futaba’s S-BUS (which is unfortunately only a supplier standard) enabling us to link different technical components from different suppliers without cable spaghetti…..

BR,
Peter.

[dahld]

FWIW., and in the interest of civility on these here forums:

Reference my post #46, and "mkovalcson's" post #49:

We have discussed the issues at hand via PM, and I've discovered Mark to be a very gracious type guy, and he apologized for letting his comments get out of hand.

I on the flip side, I should have taken the high road and PM'd him in private with my comments, rather than drag it all out into the public arena. I have apologized to Mark as well.

All good in the end,

(-: Dave

[Steve Graham]

I dream of a world where we have standards that help one companies technology work with others. I applaud Mikado for doing something that should dramatically ease setup and enhance the user experience. Perhaps in 10 years we will all look back on this as the bad old days when nothing worked together. I believe that a couple of companies will get together and develop these standards. The market place will reward these forward looking companies. Perhaps, likely? Mikado will be one of them. Perhaps a company with open source programing like Tyranis will be another?

[Russell Harding]

I think Mikado's move is probably the opposite. They are trying to leverage their FBL controller popularity to gain access to the transmitter/receiver market. Luckily using the V controller is optional... But I can see them further leveraging it... Perhaps with an exclusive setting/feature that only works with their transmitter, for example.

It is frustrating that different protocols/standards are used for 2.4 Ghz radios already, especially as there is really no practical reason for it except to lock customers into a particular brand after they have multiple receivers in their models.

It would be wonderful if everything was published as an open spec. Even without open specifications we still see 3rd party DSM2/X equipment. I also don't see why the V control protocol couldn't potentially be decoded and incorporated into the Taranis, for example.

Either way, I think this is a major step forward.

[Arag_]

Originally Posted by Hpsan

4): I know this is wishful thinking - what we really need in the market will be an open 2.4 GHz standard including a unique Transmitter operating system standard (like let’s say Android for handhelds) enabling us to install software like Mikado’s V-Bar Control on our different Transmitters. Furthermore we need an international bus standard like Futaba’s S-BUS (which is unfortunately only a supplier standard) enabling us to link different technical components from different suppliers without cable spaghetti…..

BR,
Peter.

This would be great for all of us (customers) but from my point of view, I think this is really imposible to achieve as is something similar to the different brands/architectures of computers (PC vs Mac). There is a "war" between Intel and Mac architectures, but right now the unique approach is that Mac has become their processors able to run Windows with less performance than the iOS.

For the same reasons in computers there are several architectures, the same apply to RC transmitters, so it is the way each manufacturer can compete with the other ones, so you must choose between Futaba, JR, Spektrum, Mikado among others.

By the way, I think we will need to still wait a bit more for any other announcements from Mikado with other new items and also more detailed information of the characteristics the V Control can provide.

I think Mikado has made a great job all this time and I guess most of us will get astonished when we know the full 2014 mikado's products. I hope I am not wrong, but time will say.

Sorry for my english if it is not too good, but I guess it can be understand what I am trying to say.

[ReadyToCrash]

will this radio have the regular radio controls like dual rate, expo, servo travel and so on, or will it be a proprietary system only to fly vbared helis?
thanks.

[qntt]

Well... My 2 cents:

It has no physical trim buttons which tells me the TX is dedicated to FBL and helis, not for planes.

If it is an Mikado Vbar exclusive then the price has to be very low to be of interest to anybody but we all know Mikado is not cheap.

I highly doubt that Mikado will start making receivers and software for planes since they have 0 experience with that and sell no products in that range.

I love the integration and the looks of this TX (maybe not the "in your face V"), and I am sure it will be brilliant but will I buy a transmitter that works only with Vbar? At this time I will have to say no, and certainly not at the prices that were mentioned above.

The truth is we are just speculating at this time. I very much hope it will be a huge success and that it will wake up with a serious kick in the balls all the other brands out there.