Well they got two in at my local hobby shop today. Just happened to be stopping there about something else. I walked in and the guys there say, "That's the guy!" They were supposed to call me when it came in and they couldn't remember who they were supposed to call.
So I got to hold it and play around with it a bit. It is very comfortable. The rubberized grips along the back are a bit longer than on the DX7s. Screen resolution is a step up from both the DX7s and DX8, it may even be the screen out of the DX18. Backlighting is good on it.
You can get at the system menu right from the normal adjustment menu, without having to power down and up or press the back and clear button together. Back and clear together brings you to the model list and where you can add/remove from the list. Only the models programmed are listed, which is a nice change. With the increased resolution you get a lot more information on the screen and in a better layout compared to the DX7s and DX8.
The voice alert feature is pretty cool. You can program switches and buttons and telemetry alerts from the onboard library of voice prompts. You may even be able to tie voice alerts into stages of a programmed sequence, too. Not sure on that. The volume is adjusted via the main display screen in 10% increments. And it can be very loud. It came with volume set at 50% which was way too loud for me just tooling around with it in the shop. Louder than the loudest phone ring tones I have heard. Obnoxious loud. And that was just 50%. I cranked it up to 80% and had to bump it down to 20% or so. There will be no problem hearing this TX beep or voice alert, even with a phalanx of nitros spinning up on the flight line.
It is a 9 channel radio. Plenty for most people. Hell 8 is plenty for most. There is the usual fine resolution knob on the right top edge of the case, there are also two lower resolution spinner knobs embedded into the rear grips where your index fingers would normally fall. The thought that immediately jumps to mind is FPV. One of the bad things about FPV setups is that you have a fixed camera position. Sometimes you want to be able to adjust that tilt and pan in flight. With this radio and those two knobs at your fingers you very easily could rig up something to give you 2 axis control of a FPV camera. With the alerts on this, you could also probably rig up an alert to warn you if you leave these set away from center for too long. That's just one idea. Could maybe get into some thrust vectoring, or perhaps osprey model rotor angle control. Of course if a Rx would support it, could also do on the fly adjustments of other parameters (gov gain, cyclic gain, etc.). Lots of possibilities, aside from traditional uses such as for multi-channel per wing surface control setups on airplanes.
Untested but also in the mix: sequencing, wireless buddy boxing (which I believe is compatible with any DSMX Tx so long as the DX9 is master, since the slave just connects as if it were binding to a Rx), 7 point pitch and throttle curves, possibly something new on the D/R/Expo screen (need to look at it more closely), three position switches everywhere except for the two in the back corners which are 2 position), diversity antenna (it is not just happy to see you), and probably more I'm forgetting. It comes with a lipo battery. Charger is built into the unit so the included power supply is just that.
Lastly, the rigid antenna is not nearly as obtrusive and overwhelmingly phallic as I thought it would be.
Overall I'm pretty impressed. And that's just after a 5-10 minute goof around session with it. I plan to pick one up tomorrow or Sunday.
Selling for $399 TX only, no receivers. For comparison DX8 is $349 TX only. DX7s was $299 I think when I got it, and that was with a few receivers included in the bundle, $249 TX only. I fully expect this model will cannibalize the market for new DX8s and that Horizon Hobby/Spektrum will be phasing the DX8 out as a consequence. At $50 more it is a no brainer for all the additional features you get. DX7s will probably live on.
