I’ve started getting back into RC cars, after getting a prototype RC transmitter to try out, and finding out that my trusty ’lil Turnigy Mighty Monster Beatle was missing a front transmission dogbone, so don’t drive so well anymore (and unfortunatly, this has been discontinued for a coule of years now, and getting parts for this is next to impossible now).
After some extensive research (ahem, watching YouTube videos about expensive, fast and big RC cars), I decided on two cars - the Eachine EAT14 for some outdoor racing and the Wltoys K989 for more indoor stuff.
I picked the Eachine EAT14 as it seemed like a rugged enough unit for the price, and unlike the Wltoys model it appears to be a clone of, has a standalone receiver (rather than a combo ESC and RX), meaning I could use a Radiomaster ER5C receiver with it. After unpacking it, and immediately discarding the bundled transmitter, several minutes later I had swapped in a PWM ELRS receiver and it was ready to run. I’m still awaiting for an order with more of those receivers, so for now it has a Matek CRSF-PWM-6 with a ELRS-R24-S as it was the only one I had handy with vertical pins. It fitted in quite nicely, and the SMD antenna will be just fine with the short ranges it will be running. I configured another model on the transmitter (running EdgeTX, naturally) and too it for a spin… I have to say I was impressed by the speed and power it had, and frankly was a bit scared of it when hitting full throttle! 😆
Next up, the Wltoys K989. I picked this one up for some indoor racing, not quite realising the size, as few other guys were getting the same model. Also as it was known to work with the Multi-protocol Module, so I would basically be able to use it with any of my transmitters, either natively or with a MPM module. For some reason I envisaged it as being able to fit in the palm of your hand, so I got quite a shock when it was basically filled my hand… even though I shold have known better as I had seen the picture of it in a hand showing the size of it! 🤦 Anyway, I tried to bind it to a MPM module, using the V2X2/Std protocol… nothing happened, nor when I tried either of the two sub-protocols. I randomly tried a few other protocols with no luck. I then asked a friend, and in the meantime tried the stock TX just to make sure I hadn’t gotten a lemon, as well as searching online for other info. The only video I could find suggested I was doing everything right, and the stock transmitter worked ok, so I was stumped for now. Thankfully I got a message back a little while later to say try the XK/X420 protocol… and voila… the bind LED stopped blinking, and I was in business! :) I then just had to assign the throttle and steering to channels 3 and 4, and reversed the throttle and steering controls for my transmitter, and was ready to roll.
Let the fun … er… testing begin!
