Are Radiomaster Receivers Junk? R86, R88, etc 

Three things come to mind when I hear "Bad receiver". It really is a case by case basis. Where in the aircraft was the receiver mounted. Did the person who built the model bury it down in a birds nest of servo wire? Were the dual antennas properly set 90 degrees apart to allow for best signal reception? Does the person saying they lose signal use FPV gear? did they plop a high power VTX on to or in the vicinity of the receiver and basically over power a good portion of the signals received. Is the receiver getting proper voltage to function. So many people use the cheapest ESC's they can get their hands on which may not have a proper or even stable voltage regulator tap to power receivers properly. It boils down most times to operator error or lack of knowledge or just plain laziness.

Radiomaster and frysky recievers need to be fine tuned. If you don't do this your plane will drop from the sky. There are a lot of great videos out here how to do it. Bind the protocol you want, cycle power then fine tune. They are not plug and play.

+ for fine tuning. I do doubt the range stated by radiomaster. But for your basic airfield, they work for me.

I never tested or used the original receivers but I have done extensive testing of the R88 V2 on my channel and haven't had any trouble with them at all. Perfectly acceptable range. I'll keep using them, just ordered two more in fact. I have no doubt that many folks have to find something to blame for their "dumb thumb moments" and the budget receiver, or transmitter, gets the blame.

I have one and haven't had any trouble with it

The ELRS receivers are boss... no problems.

Good video. I had a R86 when they first came out a couple years ago and I had trouble with it losing signal right out of the box

I've got an r86c in an electrified Super Sportster 60 built last winter. Tx16s using D8 protocol feeding sbus to an A3S4 gyro. 92 flights without issue since April 2023. No crashes or critical signal messages. Still do have some discomfort thinking about other's problems. It does seem that RM is making a hard turn toward ELRS and I may join those who've switched sometime soon.

Don't use reverse engineered FrSky receivers make the switch to ELRS. The ELRS team provides hardware reference designs so no reverse engineering of the protocol is needed and thus much less potential for unforseen problems. With 4-in-1 and off brand FrSky receivers you are using code that was developed by looking at the protocol between the radio and the receiver but the developers of the 4-in-1 code have no idea how the original code actually works. This is not the case with ELRS everything about the system is well understood.

i have had poor quality in other radiomaster parts like the micro ranger module....pins were blocked from factory and had to be returned...poor quality control.

I’ve had no trouble with several Radiomaster receivers. Now Orange RX… those are lost communications trash!

I purchased an R85c Rx and after fine tuning was setting it up in my model but found servo glitches about every 5-10 seconds. If I smoothly moved a stick back and forth the servo would move fine then just stop for half a sec or so then catch up. Nothing reported as anything other than strong signal. Decided I didnt dare to fly it. The Tx16s is fine, I fly with it all the time with FrSky rx, Spektrum, OrangeRX, Storm 902. The R85C passed a range test, but had the glitch still with some range.

I just bought one of each, we are gonna try and see. I figured i have the radio, lets try the receiver! Cant be any worse than trinagy back in the day, lol.

I would argue they are faulty, therefore junk. I purchased 2 R88, and 2 R86 about 2 or 3 years ago. One refused to bind no matter what I did until eventually it did so I did a range check, 5 meters was the best I got. One just had a sad pathetic LED struggling to light when I powered it, and refused to do anything, and the third had a range of about 30 meters until failsafe. One was OK, bound, tuned and range tested ok but I honestly lobbed it along with the others in the bin. I don't work on a 25% success rate! Yes all fine tuned, the ones that would even bind to begin with of course..... I'm glad I didn't fly with any of them. A friend in my club has had 1 R86 fail after working ok for a couple of flights then just didn't turn on again. That's 4 failed from 5 of these Rx I have personally owned or have seen first hand . Maybe it's a batch problem, a design problem, or something like a heat drift problem, no idea, but definitely was a problem for me, and many others. I have used quite a few systems in the last 10 or so years, 900 Crossfire, FRsky OEM Rx , and now ELRS, so I am reasonably apt with the intricacy's of each system. I have no problem with radiomaster, I have 2 of their radios, and now their ELRS based receivers ER6 and ER8 which are really solid. I'm slowly switching over from using the good but otherwise DIY looking stop gap Matek ELRS Rx with Matek PWM converters, but I won't lie, after my R86, R88 experience it took me a while to buy another radiomaster ELRS Rx!

I have 2 R86 V2's bond to a Futaba T8J on S-FHSS and even though I was able to walk 30 paces on Power Down mode I as 2 loss of signal incidents which could have killed the model but I was lucky that control came back. Unless I hear any solutions they are going in the bin and I will be going back to Corona.

Do you know if i need to do the frequency calibration with a radiomaster satellite sbus receiver?thanks

Recently purchased radio master micro for a byme a gyro receiver bound but can't get any surfaces to move So don't know if it's me or the receiver so for now I'm leaning junk

Maybe you didn't install and power them right!!

Got both types, total rubbish.

Were they finetuned what protocol did they use

This just popped up in my suggested. Interesting timing! I have used R84, R86, and R168 (the one with battery telemetry that FrSky sued over) without issue until now. Hopefully RU-vid will let me link my vid. This R168 failed, and I caught it happening. This was new out of packaging when installed in plane, and had about 3 flights on it. Currently flying it on a new ER8, but only have a couple flights on it. I have the R86 in a Great Planes Kunai, which is a semi-fast glider/sport plane and this experience has made me feel like the R86 needs to come out. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-t6Aah9eDiO8.html