Aristocraft seeker FM receiver

Model Airplane News, Nov 1997 by Trachten, Craig

Use any radio frequency!

All week long, you've been waiting to go flying. Saturday's here at last, and you load up your car/van/pickup and head to the field. When you get there, you find out that you're the victim of a catastrophe! Have you ever left your transmitter on the charger at home or grabbed your channel 43 transmitter, forgetting that the model you want to fly is on channel 16? Maybe you tried to beat the waiting game by buying a radio with a frequency that's seldom used at your field, only to find out-surprise!that nine other guys did the same thing!

The Seeker FM receiver from AristoCraft* all but eliminates the above scenarios. This advanced little piece of electronics doesn't require a conventional receiver crystal. Turn it on, press the reset button, and it will "seek" a frequency to receive. Turn on your (or someone else's) transmitter, jiggle the stick that controls channel 1, and the Seeker will tune itself to that frequency! Sound too good to be true? I'm here to tell you: it works!

The Seeker flight pack comes with a 7-channel receiver, three dual-ball-bearing servos, an on/off switch with external charge jack and set button and a 4-cell, flat 5OmAh receiver pack. A unique feature of this system is that it allows two battery packs to be installed in your aircraft. One will power the receiver; the other, your servos. A little extra weight will buy you a whole lot of flying. Both packs are turned on/off with one switch. Everything is installed the same as any other flight pack; the only difference is that there's no crystal in the receiver. Turn on the receiver (transmitter off) and press the set button. Channel 1-in my case, ailerons-will start to tick back and forth. Be sure your transmitter antenna is extended and that you're at least 25 feet away from any other transmitter.

Turn on your transmitter and move the stick for channel 1 fully back and forth.

Move it fast enough to make at least two full cycles per second. In a few seconds, the Seeker will seek and find your transmitter's frequency. Channel I (as well as all other channels) will respond to your stick input. You're in business!

I installed the Seeker in a Florio Stunt Wagon, a relatively inexpensive fun-fly airplane that gave me a chance to really put the electronics to the test. The flight pack comes with three servos, and the Stunt Wagon needed four, so I grabbed one of my Futaba* servos and plugged it in. My transmitter was a Futaba 8UAF on channel 16. As per instructions, I set the receiver and then flew the airplane. Everything went as planned, with no surprises. So everything went smoothly, big deal It did what it was supposed to do. Now it was time to have some fun! I asked everyone at the field if they would like to fly the Wagon. When I got a "Yes," I asked them to get their transmitters. I said that I wouldn't be a "happy camper" if they crashed, so I wanted them to use the transmitter they were comfortable with-theirs. After my request, I got more cross-eyed stares than I could count. (Most of the guys in our club own Futaba transmitters, so there wasn't any channel-switching to be concerned with.) I was sorry I didn't have my camera with me to catch their facial expressions as they took off using their own radios.

I also borrowed some JR transmitters to see if the Seeker would recognize them; no problem. Because channel allocation is different between Futaba and JR, though, (channel 1 is aileron with Futaba and throttle with JR), I didn't fly with a JR transmitter. I didn't want to open the aircraft and change the servo plugs around, so I just tested for response. The Seeker responded to stick movements just as well as the receivers that come with the radios.

We tested 20 to 25 different channels, and the Seeker worked with all of them. Now that I have a Seeker, I've got the ideal "never worry about going to the field and having to wait to fly" situation. One of my friends had a Hitec/RCD* Spectra synthesized RF module in his transmitter. This module allows you to set the frequency you want to transmit on, so you can go to the field with aircraft on different frequencies and take only one transmitter with you. (The module also works in the Futaba Super 7 and 8UAF radios). I took the RF Module, put it in my radio and tested at least 20 frequencies. If you own a transmitter with the synthesized RF module and AristoCraft's Seeker, you'll never have to worry about who's going to show up at the field using "your" channel. Now they're all yours.

*Addresses are listed alphabetically in the Index of Manufacturers on page 126.