Hi Guys,
Thought you may like a traders view point. I have been stocking and selling these Planet T5's from the day that they first appeared at Perkins. We cautiously purchased ten to see how they would sell and of course as soon as they arrived I had one on the test bench and stripped down to see what it was made of. To my surprise it was very well made, no dry soldered joints, no cheap parts were used and the whole layout was well thought out. Then onto the normal range tests and usability, All passed with flying colours! Apart from the fact that the Throttle channel had this annoying ratchet and was not sprung loaded. OK for other form of modelling but no good for boats or cars.
So I rang the development team at Perkins and asked them to get Twister (Planets manufacturer) to produce a Spring conversion kit and whilst at it produce the opposite - a Ratchet conversion kit.
After a few months both arrived on my doorstep and was quickly opened and the back taken off the Transmitter. I set about stripping parts out to convert to spring from Ratchet also with my camera at hand. I completed the first conversion in an hour! the second in three minutes.
I produced a small instruction handout to give to my customers when they purchased the conversation kit. I will put it as a download on my on-line shop shortly which you will get at
www.huntersystems.co.uk and then go to the Planet dept.
Now after selling hundreds of these sets I can put hand on heart and say - I have never had one return of Transmitter but have had one Receiver returned - the complaint was that there was no binding slide switch on the Receiver! As all of you know that have purchased this Kit, the switch is a micro button switch. It seems that the customer had in his mind that the switch was a slide switch and had ripped the switch off the PCB. I sent him a new one with a note to tell him of the situation. I kept the damaged one for my garden railway. It only needed a bent piece of wire to close the contacts at the time of binding.
Twister have now brought out a whole range of Planet T5 compatable Receivers from 4 to 7 channels and are now bringing out a 7 channel programable radio.
As far as I am concerned there is no other Radio set that is as capable and as low priced as the Planet T5.
Regards To you all.
Graham