How will FrSky keep up with innovation?

The thing about buying into a radio brand is that you’re both buying into for right now and into the future.  We’ve picked up a number of new FrSky customers simply because their previous preferred radio brand wasn’t keeping up with innovation. FrSky is certainly the king of innovation in RC and yet, next year will be the third year in a row we’ll go to Joe Nall with the X20RS.   The current line of transmitters will be sticking around for quite a few years.  The innovation will be in the updates to Ethos making your current transmitter even better over time.   Still, what is FrSky doing to keep up with innovation?

Yesterday I had a management meeting. We were shown renderings of projects, some coming out this year, some next year, some in 2027. I cannot step on the future announcements. Also, timeframes tend to get thrown off by a few months due to one reason or another. People get quite annoyed when they expect something that doesn't come out until months later. Some of these plans were for things we may see this year, some were rough drafts of future projects that are years away.   What is important is that directionally this is where FrSky is heading. It's pedal to the metal when it comes to innovation!
The radio lineup for FrSky will remain pretty much as you see it now all the way through the end of 2026.  There are no plans for refinement of the current lineup as of now.  Radios of the future will be things that fill in gaps instead of replacing what is currently in the lineup.  Thus, if you are worried if your X18RS is going to be replaced by something more stellar next year, it’s not happening.  There may be some mild refinements over the next few years here and there. But they won't be large enough changes to make you want to abandon your current transmitters. The point that is hard to convey is that FrSky has changed since I joined the company in 2022. At the time FrSky was transitioning away from the Taranis and Horus transmitters as their primary line to Tandem which was very much work in progress. There was more of a sense of urgency to find a radio line that would take root in the market. Now that we have it, the planning seems to be slower, more methodical and more focused on getting it right the first time. Also, the information I convey which is essentially opinions made from talking to hundreds of you and my dealers only reinforces what management has heard from others. One comment a dealer made to me was the topic of a 15 minute conversation. The entire product line offering was evaluated carefully based on his comment and one significant change will occur because of it. Servos were discussed. Our original plan was to do away with the BLS 5404 and BLS 5402 in order to have more inventory on the other 3 servos in the BLS 5400 series. During the meeting I owned up to the fact that this was a mistake. The BLS 5404 is beloved by many, including the IMAC pilots. The BLS 5402 is used in the heli community for the tail. Management said as long as we can continue to sell it, they'll keep making it. We've found one issue with the 6500 series brushless servos and we're actively working on a fix for them. The last thing I've heard is the engineers think they have a solution. This has become a priority in the company. So to summarize what I am saying, the brushless series 6500 is nearly perfect, one fix needed. The BLS 5400 series is wonderful and the entire series will remain intact with no product eliminations. After the update on the 6500 series you can expect to see the brushless series continue to be offered without a lot of changes going forward. The brushless series is big, beefy and macho. At first glance, this is what people tend to want when then look for servos.

The remainder of what FrSky offers are coreless servos. Trust me, I am a big fan of FrSky's brushless servos I am a larger fan of our second generation of coreless servos. The MD5301H is a servo that has minimal slop, nearly no play, and is very quiet. It's also beefy as hell and tends to endure a lot of abuse. At 375 ounce inch its specs are insane. This was a gen 2 coreless servo. The Gen 1 FrSky servos were remarkably Gen 1. We had a lot to learn at the time. By the end of the year the Gen 1 coreless servos will be gone forever. What will replace them will be more Gen 2 coreless servos similar to the MD5301. What these things will be, their specs and their street price is going to garner attention.

FrSky could have easily been a transmitter and receiver company. But it had a vision to offer all the electronics in a plane. There was a time when a good portion of the line, excluding the transmitters and receivers weren't up to the reputation that FrSky had built for itself. Back 2022 the focus was on improving the entire line of receivers. This was a huge task. Once it was over it seems that a lot of attention went into the non-radio parts of FrSky and things have been improving across the board. The vision of a FrSky electronics plane is looking like a better and better idea with each passing month. Within the next few years FrSky will have one of the most robust product lines on the market. When others are stagnating, FrSky continues to push the limits of innovation.