Graupner + Weatronic outside the EU?

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Graupner + Weatronic outside the EU?

Postby Toumal » Wed May 12, 2010 7:14 am

Graupner is slowly but surely moving away from IFS (=XPS) here in europe, they're only advertising Weatronic these days and have completely stopped placing ads for IFS in the german-speaking parts of europe. I'm wondering if the same is true for other place and would like to know if you guys know anything about that?
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Re: Graupner + Weatronic outside the EU?

Postby RCModelReviews » Wed May 12, 2010 7:24 am

I don't know what the story is with Graupner and XPS/IFS but there have been many rumors over the years.

The XPS/IFS product now seems quite sound but perhaps Graupner have had enough of the unprofessional antics of the company's management.

To see what I mean, allow me to link to an entertaining thread on RCG that someone pointed me at this week.

JD's post needs no comment from me.

I'm sure people will draw their own conclusions :roll:
RCModelReviews.com, just the facts.
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Re: Graupner + Weatronic outside the EU?

Postby Toumal » Wed May 12, 2010 8:22 am

Well, his reaction doesn't surprise me in the least.
JD claimed that the characteristics of a monopole antenna do not cause trouble when the RC antenna points right at the transmitter. He later pointed to Futaba's smaller single-antenna receivers saying "See, even they do it now", totally ignoring the simple fact that Futaba is NOT selling these as full range receivers. This is only one of many cases of him selectively ignoring things. His very unprofessional "debunking vid" that was meant to counter Kiwi's first XPS view review speaks volumes.
Personally I'd steer clear of the products designed by someone who doesn't understand what "-20dB" means. And it's amazing to read him rave about XPS "working just fine after millions of flights" - when in fact XPS/IFS was banned from several competitions in germans due to safety concerns after multiple failures.
Sadly, many RC pilots have no radio engineering background and the many superficial "reviews" in RC magazines don't really help. Most of them give good marks if the light comes on green and the servos move, or a couple flights worked out. Hardly anyone out there puts RX/TX systems under any real stress or actually tries to find and point out limits and weaknesses.

Perhaps Graupner finally googled up on Jim Drew and found out about his previous businesses (those of you who don't know, look at http://www.pbnation.com/showthread.php?p=26376318 and http://www.lysator.liu.se/amiga/al/guide/al102/jim_drew_good_or_bad.HTML)

Interestingly enough the best selling Graupner combination right now is the Jeti Duplex system. Not only do they have FHSS, antenna diversity and telemetry out of the box, most retailers in my area sell Graupner transmitters in combo packages with Jeti. I guess the biggest problem with Weatronic is their relatively high price.
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