What is going on here?

[Capgains]

I am a long time customer of yours and I’ve been away from the hobby for a few years taking care of life stuff.  Then of course Covid and the great chip shortage happened.  You guys have been offline out of inventory for 2-3 years now?  I recently saw your web page that was there before your new relaunching soon page that is there now.  You said you bought a drone company or large application drone part producing company and with the supply chain shortage you decided not to produce RC equipment to feed the other business.  I guess that makes good business sense, but you kinda left us out to dry.   Additionally you will no longer honor your lifetime warranty you promised on the 8 and 10 channel receivers, of which I have 12 of and you can no longer repair them either?   

Why in the heck would I continue to buy your equipment when you are discontinuing some and not able to service your own products? Producing a limited line of products you can’t even keep in stock. Are you guys gonna be an RC receiver company or not?  You had that forum where you talked about some new fancy Transmitter you were going to be producing… WTH happened with that?   Why should I believe your web page that you are coming back in early 2024 with a whole new line of products now that I’m sitting on a pile of old non serviceable products?   I liked you radio systems a lot but how can you expect to grow your brand if you periodically disappear, shut off, or discontinue what you put out there?  Maybe you should just stick to what drives you, $$$$ and stop jerking us modelers around.

[XPS]

We sold everything we could produce and can no longer get components (discontinued by the manufacturer) for most of the items that we have sold over the last 17 years. That's the reason for needing to discontinue some products - we just can't make them anymore because the components are no longer available.

We shifted from being strictly an R/C company to being a mostly UAV oriented company in 2013. Since that time we have released many new products for the R/C industry, which have been basically "hand me downs" from the UAV industry. That continues still to do this day. So, we design and build products for the UAV industry and some years later we can then use a subset of that technology for the R/C industry. By 2018 less than 5% of our entire business was R/C related, and there was a discussion when acquiring the other companies of simply dropping the R/C side completely because it makes no financial sense to continue it. However, that small percentage is the most fun side of the business, so a decision was made to split that company as a separate entity. We will see what happens with it moving forwards.

We will be releasing new R/C products, basically redesigns/upgrades of some previously released products using components that are readily available. All of our products did not suddenly stop working because of their age, and we have been updating and repairing products (when possible) even though the main website has been down. If you have something that needs repaired, just email the tech support department with info and we can help you.

We will eventually phase out all of the 2.4GHz transmitter modules because the RF module used in those was discontinued 7 years ago. We bought a large inventory of those RF modules when we were made aware of the fact that they would be discontinued. We do have our own brand receiver (RFU) and the X10+ that works with it. We have a limited number of Nano RF chips (that chip was discontinued by the manufacturer) that we are collecting to make a production run. A production run has a minimum requirement to even do the run, and we periodically find new-old-stock of the chip and add it to the collection. We are getting close to having enough for one final small (1000 pieces) run.

[RyanNX211]

I'd love to get some more Nanos!

[don44039@yahoo.com]

Jim
I am really sorry to hear the above as your system has been the most reliable I have in my brothers and my fleet. We have used them at Flight Fest for the last 3 years with no noticeable glitches. Any chance we can get on a waiting list? or put a deposit in on a lot of rx.s. Is there any chance you will eventually produce TX modules again? I have sold off all my spectrum stuff. It seemed when they got interference, the RX would reboot, similar to the brownout problem they had at first. And I still have never fixed the low-voltage reboot. Using your module in frsky tx. I have had decent luck with their Rx, though I have had to send back two for low range.
Your stuff was the biggest bang for the buck. And dead on rock solid and reasonably priced.
Been with you from the start. Your rx/s boot fastest.
don king

[XPS]

Thanks... we have some light at the end of the (long) tunnel we have been in. The RF chipset that we used for the Nano receivers is going back into production. Transmitter modules will not be possible as they are currently. The company that made those RF modules discontinued them 7 years ago. We have depleted our inventory recently (last month), but we can use the RFU as a transmitter. We just have to adapt it to our transmitter module circuitry so we are looking at an easy way to do that.

[flyingw]

That's exciting news Jim!

I have been exclusively an XPS user since it came out and also an XPS advocate to others.  Your news reassured me because recent electronic part shortages have forced me to reluctantly consider a contingency plan for a replacement radio control system.  Very reluctantly because your system performs so well in terms of reboot time (like Don said above), control signal re-acquisition time (as in recovering from failsafe), range, resistance to interference, installation flexibility with receiver and X10 choices, low-voltage capability, reliability and cost. 

I currently use the XPS Futaba Tx module for my 9C transmitter and the XPS JR-type Tx module for my Taranis.  If either of those transmitters or transmitter modules failed I may not be able to keep flying my planes equipped with XPS Nanos, RFUs and X10s.  My Futaba 9C is twenty years old and the Taranis is ten years old.  Most of my models are on the Taranis.

I reckon that the highest priority for me would be a new XPS transmitter module that works with a contemporary transmitter.

It's kind of like choosing a doctor - find someone younger so they will outlast you.  I estimate that I will still be RC flying for another twenty years so I need to plan for that horizon.

Be well,

Paul