Lemon Receivers

[Crash Test]

I always told myself I would never put a cheap receiver in any of my planes. But curiosity got thr best of me. Did some research on these Lemon receivers and decided to give them a try. Tested it in the 182 skytrainer, and it worked great. Decided to put one in one of my war birds, and ended up having my first ever brown out. On final approach for a landing about 20ft up, I lost everything. No motor, no controls, no nothing. My corsair stalled and slammed into the pavement. Repairs far exceeded the cost of a Spektum receiver, which I have never had any problems with.
Now I know not to do that again!

If your thinking of giving Lemon a try, consider this a friendly warning

[xviper]

Not only have I and a bunch of guys at my flying field given Lemon a "try", we've been using them for quite some time now and have never had a problem with them. Many of us have even re-purchased several times. A few of these Lemons have even been in sailplanes that have flown over a thousand feet up and even further away. I've used their 6-ch, 8-ch and about to install a 10-ch. All have failsafe. We'll buy them again. Perhaps you got one of the earlier versions. Looking back at Spektrum in the early days, they also had problems and lots of people were negative about them. I personally, have had a couple Spektrum fail on me, but that won't stop me from using Spektrum. One was their high end AR8000 and yes, the repairs far exceeded the cost of that Rx. To this day, you will find gobs of people who won't touch Spektrum ever again. You'll see them on this forum. Same goes for HobbyKing's Orange products. With every product, we will find someone who have had a bad experience and will find fault and never use them again. I had one of those "no motor, no controls, no nothing" incidents. It wasn't a brownout. It was an ESC failure in one case and a fused battery connection in another.
PS. You could have saved yourself considerable grief had you used one of these:
http://www.amainhobbies.com/rc-helic...sc-bug/p239994
Stuff happens no matter what you use. All we can do is take advantage of some insurance.

[Crash Test]

Thanks for your input xviper2. Maybe I did get a bad one. And I realize stuff happens no matter what a guy uses, but having that "stuff" happen right out of the gate, leaves a bad taste. Hopefully more people share their experience using these receivers.
I'm not going to give up on them yet. I will leave the one in the Sky trainer since that one seems to be working fine, and see how it goes.

Not sure how the scorpion backup guard would have saved me any grief in a brownout situation

[xviper]

but having that "stuff" happen right out of the gate, leaves a bad taste. Hopefully more people share their experience using these receivers.

Not sure how the scorpion backup guard would have saved me any grief in a brownout situation

Yes, it does. That's the "psychology of life experiences" doing its thing. At times, that's all we have to go on.
When I first found out about Lemon, the internet threads trashed them. People had bad experiences with them but as time went by, more and more people used them without bad things happening. I got one and used one of my older, cheap kit builds as a test bed for different Rxs. When they proved themselves after a few flights, I put them in nicer planes. I have one of the Lemon stabilized Rxs in it now going through a lengthy test. It's ready to go into a better plane now. And a buddy is about to test one in his scratch built plane now.
You're right. The Back Up guard would not have done a thing if in fact, it was a brown out. What it would have done was to rule out non-Rx related issues. It would have provided the ability for a dead stick landing. You might want to do a couple of test runs with a different Rx to ensure it wasn't an ESC or battery connection issue. ESCs can go into auto shut down if the voltage cutoff is too high.

[Dewey H Lee]

At one time and there still is a bunch of knock offs around. I bought some receivers off of eBay one time still in the package. Something just didn't look right so I sent one to horizon to check out for me and they turned out to be clones. Trashed all 5. Should have know 10.00 a piece was to good to be true. Back when I didn't know any better. Only buy buy from reputable companies now.

[xviper]

When Lemon first came out, they were plagued with problems and many people said it was just a poor "knock-off" of a Spektrum product (same for HobbyKing's Orange products). It may or may not have been. I won't go into that debate but some of the features sure do look similar. Nevertheless, even knock-offs can be perfected and offer great value. Then there's the matter of legalities and morality of knock-offs. When I see a Chinese knock off (Lemon) of a Chinese product (Spektrum) and knowing how there is no honor among certain "thieves", it doesn't bother me a whole lot to save a few bucks. It is commonly believed that Chinese entrepreneurs don't honor copyright no matter what country they belong to. Besides, Lemon is sold by RC Castle, a "reputable" company.
Oh, and there is another company called "buyVD.com" (dig the name, huh) somewhere in Armpit, China, who sells Spektrum Rxs at nearly 1/2 price (or less). Are they clones or the real thing? I don't know. Who really does? A couple of us have tried some and so far, so good.

[doctormike]

Is it just me, or do you really want to buy a "lemon"? I just don't trust my planes to anything but Spektrum or the other name brands. Doc

[boomer108]

I'm with you Doc! Just not worth experimenting with a good plane or any plane for that matter.

Roy B.

[doctormike]

Plus the safety factor...Do you want to find yourself in court because your plane went through a windshield...or worse, because of a "lemon"?!!! Doc

[xviper]

We've seen the rivalry and controversy in this area before and it's still going on. Futaba guys hate Sprektrum, JR hates Airtronics, Airtronics and Spektrum hates everybody. This will never stop and let's face it, there is no empirical data that would suggest one is better than the other. You know the phrase, "A rose by any other name ............................... " I don't let a name rule my sensibilities. That what prep school girls and frat boys do. Oh, and those in Canada will well remember the Buick LaCross name plate. In Quebec, that word is associated with masturbation. GM quickly nixed that one. Sure a name is important but let's not forget it's just name. It has nothing to do with quality or performance.

[weedsnager]

I have 4 lemon receivers, two with the built in stabilizer.....they have been fabulous!!! I will continue to buy them. Great value !

[VOODOO]

We've seen the rivalry and controversy in this area before and it's still going on. Futaba guys hate Sprektrum, JR hates Airtronics, Airtronics and Spektrum hates everybody. This will never stop and let's face it, there is no empirical data that would suggest one is better than the other. You know the phrase, "A rose by any other name ............................... " I don't let a name rule my sensibilities. That what prep school girls and frat boys do. Oh, and those in Canada will well remember the Buick LaCross name plate. In Quebec, that word is associated with masturbation. GM quickly nixed that one. Sure a name is important but let's not forget it's just name. It has nothing to do with quality or performance.

Your statement is "spot" on. When I returned to r/c after a 4 year absence, I had never heard of the "TACTIC" brand, but after some assurance on forums, I bought a 6 channel. Never a problem, and I now also own their 8 channel, as well as a SPECTRUM DX7, and the only times I have had failures, they have been battery or "dumb thumb" related.

[wrongroad]

G'day Viper,
I see your point and totally agree with use what works for you. You know I have pushed that barrow on all threads.
What worries me is not whether a receiver is good or bad but the fact that a model will crash with a coloured [or name brand] RX and then the pilot uses the same RX in another model without having the RX checked out.
The fault does not necessarily lie with the RX but the failure to have it checked out after the first crash. Often [not always] the 'no response' type crash is pilot error and the machine is locked into the good old death spiral.
I had a crash when the model flicked over into a dive and simply continued to dive no matter what I did to the sticks. For this one I do blame the [very cheap] equipment as I was flying hands off [Radian] and the Radian simply dived into the deck. Radians will recover given enough height they do not hold a dive unless there is input to do so.
One thing that I will recommend to all pilots is to use the dual diversity receivers [two aerials] as I have seen the majority of the 'no signal' have involved RX's with a single aerial.
We fly out in the country about eight kilometres from the nearest cell phone tower on our number one field and we have very few dramas, yet our number two field is in line of sight of two cell phone towers and we have a few 'no signal' issues but mainly with some of the cheaper units not always the coloured units.
My experience with after market parts is that they are often made by the OEM or the supplier to the OEM and yet I have often been told 'not to fit after market parts to my tractor.'
The bottom line is use what works for you. Simple is it not.
Regards and respect as always
Daryl