Ed: Who know's with Futaba and JR. The work so hard to keep secrets from each other that we won't know anything until it's ready to sell.

Dan: I am not sure if it's JR directly, Horizon Hobby owns both companies and may just use the JR case for the Spectrum7. Like I told Ed, big trade secrets here!

After market guys won't be able to produce modules to use in the brand systems Ed.  FCC rules state that the only removable module that can be used in a transmitter, must be certified by the manufacturer of the transmitter.  Otherwise... it's illegal.  So you and I are going to have to wait for MPX a sister company of Hitec to produce one that will plug into the Evo.   And from the the two years I've owned one, change is not something that happens fast at MPX.  The current version of their radio software still has nuisance problems, (grammerical and a poor default setting)  They have updated the software in that time twice, and still didn't fix the errors. 

I am not sure that applies in SST which is still classified "experimental". There is
a third party out there already marketing modules. This "toy" spectrum has more
contradictions within it than Swiss has holes in its cheese. That bothered me back
when they initially began trying to arrive on standards ten years ago. Eventually,
greed gave way to practicality and WIFI standards were agreed to.

I started with a Kraft Gold Medal sytem in 1968.  I added two more Kraft radios in the 70s and early 80s.  I was loyal to Kraft and would likely still be using them, if they were around and state of the art.  In the mid 1980s, it seemed the writting was on the wall for this fine manufacturer and a change was in the air. 

A friend had an Airtronics Championship 7 which he loved and before I knew it I had two and several airbornes for them.  I also had a surface Airtronics Championship two channel radio for cars.  When I got back into the hobby, it was natural to go back to what I knew and bought an Airtronics VG6000.  This is a great radio and I find it's only problem is the lack of model memory at 4 each.  Before ARFs, 4 would have been adequate!  My VG is full and I just bought an Airtronics RD6000 with 8 model memory.

My personal opinion is the only difference between manufacturers is name loyalty.  I doubt there is any real difference in quality, their all great.  However, I don't understand Airtronics loss of market share!

I'm going to wait and see how spread spectrum works out.   

Futaba announced their 2.4GHz Spread Spectrum radio for $219. It's a 6 channel but perhaps there is a trend starting. The Futaba system looks very much like the JR systems.

http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXPZT8& amp;P=3