Was recently told that as I progress in my driving ability and get better and faster I will reach a point where my radio system (FlySky 6 channel) will become obsolete as in my rx not responding fast enough to input from the tx. It was suggested I go to either Futaba or Sanwa. I primarily drive indoor black carpet and prolly always will. It was suggested that, for example, a 13.5 T brushless/lipo car would be potentially faster than then the tx/rx system can handle and therefore I would need to upgrade to either Futaba or Sanwa. The steering servos I'm using are Power HD R12s's which claim a .06 response time on 7.4v. Can some one please clarify this?

I have a buddy that uses a FlySky for his 1/10 and 1/8 scale buggies. He has no issues with it.

Most simple transmitters have a framerate of 50Hz. So every 20msec servo information is transmitted. The frame is a steady timed transmission So when you make a steer move the latency is depending on which moment in the frame you make the move, so you will have a variable latency between 0 and 20msec. With fast cars and tight corners it can make a difference of getting the apex right, going over the curbs or going too wide.

Any decent transmitter with normal digital servo's you can have a frame up to 333Hz, that is 3msec narrowing the variable latence down a lot.

Then Sanwa and Futaba (Also the flysky noble) knows super response where the framerate goes up to 1000Hz and beyond making a variable latency of 1msec and lower. Only then special servo's are needed.

Is this Framerate something I can look up for my FlySky tx?

With the Spektrum Pro transmitters you can change the frame speed between 16.5, 11 and 5.5msec, it is an option in the menu. Some transmitters have an option to change between analog and digital servo's. If your transmitter has no likewise option then high chance it has a slow framerate (most cheap models do)

The 20msec frame was a standard for analog servo's, they have a build in reset of about 14msec to listen to the new servo info. Digital servo's can instantly have new servo information after the previous one.

If you have a Futaba 3PV, which just costs about 150 dollar I think then you have the T-FHSS mode which can go up to 3msec but again, serious racers mostly want to use Sanwa for their super speed SSR and SXR mode several servo brands do support and Futaba with their SR and UR and also The Flysky Noble pro with the SR up to 1000Hz do become popular as well.

The majority of pro level drivers in my area are running the FS Noble NB4 and many of them have moved away from Futaba and Sanwa just to try something different. Pretty much everyone agrees that all modern systems are comparable with respect to speed/performance, the only differences will be ergonomics and features like touch screen, etc.


It's not clear which 6Ch FS you are running, but their dated tech has significantly lower resolution where if you were to race the NB4 for a year then went back to a GT-5 as an example, then the GT-5 will feel "notchy" with less precision in the corners. You won't necessarily drive any slower, but the higher precision offered by the NB4 will certainly increase your confidence in feeling more "connected" with the car.

My son runs fine using his Flysky radio. But it depends what you are used to. 20 msec is .02 seconds and at 30 mph the car will move .88 feet during that time. Change that to 3 msecs and the car moves .132 feet, so it's a difference of 3/4 of a foot. That seems like a lot until you realize that you can adjust your driving to accommodate that. You just turn in 3/4 foot earlier. The biggest problem would be if you switch between a fast radio to a slow radio, it will take some time to adjust.

I owned a FlySky GT5. I thought it was good enough for 1/10 off-road competition. At some parts i needed to accelerate quickly to make a jump after short part. I was always hard to achieve this, i thought my esc to slow for it. One day when practicing, i asked one of the guys to use my car and transmitter to see what i am doing wrong. The thing he instant noticed was the response time was way to slow. He showed me that if you moved the trigger this far, your car should have moved already, wich it didn't, resulting pulling the trigger to far and doing to much already, making everything harder to control. So got myself a Futaba 3PV, this was huge difference.

Your math assumes that the latency is the same each time. It's not. Your control input is not synchronised with the update window, it's sampled. So your input can happen at the start of the window or the end. That 3/4 of a foot is random, if you try to pre-empt it you might turn too early.

My son uses the NB4 and has no problem smoking guys with $600+ tx.

Does that say something about the transmitter, your son or the other guys?

A very good racer with lets say a simple 20 dollar GT2 transmitter can still compete and win from a bunch of bashers with high end stuff.....

Are cheap radios slower?? $100 vs $600 - YouTube

Better radios do make the car easier to drive. Lots of people, including myself, can tell you about how much better their driving got after upgrading their radio. It just makes the car so much easier to control.

I don't have one of the latest "extremely fast" radios but I do have a variety of 2.4GHz radios and I remember crystal radios as well.

I've never felt that a good quality radio was unresponsive, regardless of the protocol.

I can't say the same about the low-end radios I've tried.

A lot is purely in the quality of the manufacture. Precision in the stick/trigger/wheel makes a huge difference (nothing worse than feeling the wheel creak as you turn it or a big dead point in the movement of the trigger).

I have cars set up with standard and high-speed protocols depending on the electrics in them. When I miss an apex it's never because the radio was too slow.

I've driven someone else's car with the mid-range Flysky (GT3?) that bashers rave about and it felt awful. But my Futaba 3PV (cheapest computer wheel radio they do) feels great.

Almost everyone I see that starts racing moves on to a Futaba or Sanwa radio after a short while. I don't see anyone going back.

Make no mistake, the Fly Sky Noble NB4 should not be discounted.

I recently measured the frame rate on the NB4 with a PPM meter and got a reading of 2.6ms for it's frame rate!

I have raced with over a dozen models of radios from the following brands:

Futaba, Sanwa, KO Propo, HITEC, Radiopost, Graupner, Radiolink, FlySky, Spektrum, BER, Turnigy and a few no names.

You can put me on the list of someone who raced Futaba + Sanwa and went back to FlySky

I currently have a Graupner and HITEC as backups

For the price/features/performance, the Noble NB4 gets my vote today

The standard NB4 is amazing value, but the NB4 Pro basically doubled the price with very little benefit.