Radio Control Transmitters are one of the most costly pieces of gear you’ll need to buy up-front when getting into the hobby. As such, we’re always on the lookout for a good entry-level radio.





Overview

RadioLink has been a player in the RC transmitter market for a long time now. In the US, it has always competed as a budget alternative to the “big dogs” like JR/Spektrum, Futaba, and lately FrSky. The RadioLink AT10 is their current top of the line model, with the following





features:

Support for up to 12 radio control channels over a modern FHSS 2.4GHz link.

Fully computerized mixer configuration for fine control over most basic model aircraft functions.

Full array of 2 and 3-position switches, as well as momentary switches, knobs and sliders.

Diversity receivers with S.Bus support and telemetry.

Beautiful color LCD screen for configuration and telemetry monitoring.





One low point of the AT10 is it’s manual. The English is frankly not great so you can expect to be Googling around quite a bit to learn how to use your transmitter for the first time. I hope to help out with that a bit in the next section.





Build Quality & Aesthetics

The RadioLink AT10 is a very nice looking radio. It is nice and chunky and feels substantial, unlike the FlySky FS-i6 . It is about the same size as the FrSky Taranis or high-end Spektrum radios. The plastic face plate in the front of the radio comes in two colors, orange and silver. I’m particularly fond of the looks of the orange version that I received.





The radio comes with a battery bay which accepts AA batteries. It can easily be upgraded to LiPo power, though: any battery that fits in a FrSky Taranis should fit in the AT10, too.





Most of the control switches, knobs and the sticks have a pleasant feel to them. The same can’t be said for the buttons used to access the settings menu – they all feel flimsy and cheap. This carries over into the menu itself, where the wheel used to make actual adjustments makes it difficult to make large changes. Rotating the wheel quickly causes the values to adjust up and down seemingly at random, so you need to take it slow. Note that this behavior was substantially improved when I performed a software update on the radio.

Another gripe I have is the power switch. It has a ton of play and feels like it could break at any time. It’s feels really lame to pick up this nice looking radio and the first thing you do is try to switch it on, only to have the power switch shift around under your thumb.









The antenna will be one of the first things to break on any often-used radio. LIke most budget radios, the RadioLink AT10 has a fixed antenna that swivels. It is not replaceable, so you’ll be cracking the radio open to make repairs if you damage it. The antenna does have a metallic hinge pin, which should help against minor abuse. We definitely prefer replaceable antennas – this has the added benefit of allowing pilots to customize their radio with higher gain antennas should they desire longer range.





The radio comes with a battery receptacle that accepts 8 AA batteries for power. It uses a JST-style power plug which gives you the possibility to replace the battery with a 3S LiPo or 12V NiCD. The plug inside the radio isn’t very well labeled and is easy to reverse, but RadioLink has included a circuit which prevents damage if you plug it in the wrong way. The bay is the same size as the FrSky Taranis battery bay so anything that works in the Taranis will work in this radio.





The color LCD is a nice touch and is the main selling point of this radio over it’s competitors, in my opinion. In bright sunlight, it can get a bit washed out, but the pixel density allows the menus to be descriptive and easy to navigate. It also allows RadioLink to display a lot of information on screen at all times – particularly important for telemetry.





Functionality & Performance

I love the layout of the main screen of this radio. The full LCD makes it very easy to glance down and get the information you need.





Evaluating the performance of this radio starts with the binding process outlined above – and I am a huge fan. Unlike FrSky systems, you won’t be looking up YouTube videos every time you want to bind a receiver with this radio. I loved how everything hooked up and started working by simply turning the radio on. This includes a fantastic telemetry system.

The two most important performance measurements of any radio are latency and range. I’m happy to say that the latency on this radio seems great — on par with my CrossFire system or Spektrum (which beats out FrSky, by the way), both of which I spend most of my time with.









This is likely due to the “dual spectrum” DSSS+FHSS technology that RadioLink uses. FrSky uses FHSS, which provides better noise resistance at the cost of higher latency. RadioLink should theoretically be able to fall back to FHSS if the DSSS link fails. The other side of latency is the receiver link to your flight controller. Happily, most modern RadioLink receivers support SBus, which offers great latency figures. See the “Receiver Wiring & Installation” section above for information on receiver options.





The range of the transmitter seems perfectly fine to me. I did not fly with this radio at any crowded events, but was able to fly about a mile out and back with two bars still showing on the telemetry RSSI readout. At this distance I was feeling pretty edgy – I definitely didnt want to walk all that way to recover the quad! Given this, I think this range is perfectly acceptable for the average drone pilot. If your goal is extremely long range, you should get a radio with a module which will allow you to “upgrade” to CrossFire or a similar long range system.





Conclusion

I found the RadioLink AT10 to be a good mid-level radio. It is a clearly superior radio to the FlySky FS-i6, but costs more than twice as much at $140 at the time of this review. It’s competition is realistically the FrSky QX7 and X-lite. Compared to those, it fares well by having better features and a better radio link. I would say build quality is about the same.





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