Is it time for a new radio?

[zer0]

I've had the old school crystal radio that comes with the Traxxas XL5 for a few months now and I've been noticing a few things:

• The wheel used to have a springiness to it that no longer exists. It just flops back and forth - is that normal?
• I seem to be having the fear that someone else will be running a red crystal when I go out one day and I'm going to get really pissed. I don't want that to become reality.
• I don't know anything about radios

With that said, I was looking at a Futaba 3PRKA 2.4Ghz Radio (http://bit.ly/opX5GZ). Is there anything I should be aware of? Or am I going to be able to just put in the new receiver and go? Thanks for any assistance - it's much appreciated.

[zer0]

I found this Fly-Sky model (http://bit.ly/pnruG2) - for less than $55 you get the radio, receiver, and rechargeable batteries. Has anyone had any experience with this brand or model?

I also noticed on the manual they talk about the Fly Sky servo. Can I not use this with my traxxas servo?

[marooko]

For some crazy reason I was reading "receiver" instead of "servo". 

[twsjeep]

Buy the flysky order a new servo from them too.

[Motomike]

I found this Fly-Sky model (http://bit.ly/pnruG2) - for less than $55 you get the radio, receiver, and rechargeable batteries. Has anyone had any experience with this brand or model?

I also noticed on the manual they talk about the Fly Sky servo. Can I not use this with my traxxas servo?

There are a few guys at the track that use this radio and I haven't heard any complaints. If you look at the servos on that website they are inexpensive too and would probably have better specs than you traxxas servo. But I don't think you would have a problem using the traxxas. One of the guys is using his old futaba servo from the 80's with this radio! 

[zer0]

Thanks for the tip Johnny - hopefully I'll be picking that radio up this weekend.

Maybe I'm not understanding this correctly - however it says that the receiver of that model requires an additional battery. Does it not just use the power from the battery pack? If it does use the battery pack then according to the information you can't run over a 5 cell or 2s lipo. So using my 7 cell traxxas battery won't work with this?

I hope I'm really wrong. This looked like a pretty cool radio.

[zer0]

I think I got the answer I was looking for. A friend of mine, who flies RC helicopters, said that when flying planes and copters you want your servos to be controlled by a separate battery in case the motor is killed. For ground rc this isn't apparently that big of an issue - just keep it wired to the ESC.

Makes sense to me.