Amazing that for telemetry functionality naval modelers are willing to spend so much money that there is the need to start saving. But it always has been like that. If you d not want to invest in learning then you need to invest money and commercial vendors get rich.
Just lets shortly show one of the infinity possibilities.
An easy way it to use your smartphone or tablet to communicate via WLAN with your model.
This board with an OLD display at
amazon just costs 12,62 USD. At
Youtube you find tons of tutorials and DIY videos to make available not just the kind of telemetries you find at your commercial suppliers and for which you have to start saving. Just one board connected to a 3.3 VDc battery lets your model interact with your smartphone. Connecting sensors is nearly identical to what you have to do with comercial suppliers telemetry kits. If you go to ebay and search for esp32 you will find boards starting from 0.91 USD. I you search at ebay for
esp432 kits you find a board with a camera at 6.99 USD + 0.99 USD for shipping.
Just having given you a brief glimpse about the options for the telemetries to those pricey and featureless kits from your commercial supplier. If you buy an
Arduino UNO Starter Kit that you get for 11.09 USD including free shipping you have a luxury setup to make not just the telemetries you can think of but also control stuff from you smartphone! By the way Arduino UNO board can be purchased for just less than 5 USD and its programming environment, called IDE for Integrated Development Environment, Is the software with which you will do all the programming led by DIY Youtube videos..