I first bought a 2.4 Gig Transmitter for my wife has I would no sooner set her up for sailing her boat, get out my boat and she wanted to sail something else ! so it would be all change with the crystals in boat and tranny !
The Futaba 2.4 was nearly £200 with receivers @ £75 each ,too rich for my blood! so we went for the Spektrum DX6i which was £125 which comes with one 6ch receiver and extra receivers after that at
£35-£65 each.
This tranny model has 10 model memories so I was able to adapt all Velda's boats and now she can line them all up on the water and just dial in the model name she wants to sail.
This would work on model garden railways no doubt with a bit of modification.
The receiver shown is the 6 channel type you get with the tranny, as you can see quite small ( no drilling holes in your boat for the aerial to come through) The extra bit on the end is for better reception when flying a model plane a long way away, there is a cheaper version without the extension quite good enough for boats though only 4 channel !
Since we bought our 2.4s ( yes I bought one as well ) there are other cheaper models that have come on the market ie the Planet model about £45 with one receiver and extra receivers at only £15 each though they are a bit bigger in size that the Spektrum and there is only one Model memory !
One of the best things we discovered about the 2.4 tranny's is that where as the crystal tranny batteries though 9.2 v only had a 700amh rating and sometimes you didn't get a full days sailing ,(annoying if you are playing away ) the 2.4 trannies have 4 "AA" batteries and the power drain is minimal and seems to last forever. I don't even bother to use rechargable batteries in ours any more, just carry a 4 pack of "AA"s incase.
For
Minimal Power drain
Smaller receivers
No drilling your boat for aerial's
No frequency board to worry about Ie the 20min rule if some one else on your frequency.
When you go to other venue's no problem with frequencies.
No one on your frequency driving your boat into a wall.
Against
No good for submarines as the micro waves don't travel under water.
