Having spoken to Andrew the project director at Haya ltd at length on some of the points raised in this thread I will take the opportunity to relay his answers as he is not a member on this forum.
The main points we raised to Haya ltd were, is this model in any way directly connected to the Heng Long brand and is Haya ltd partly or fully a subsidiary of Heng Long. The emphatic answer to that was a no. Andrew was at pains to say although his company Haya ltd is pleased to be the Official Heng Long distributor for the UK it is none the less a separate and totally independent company in its own right and has dealt not only with HL but also with Torro, Matorro and others in the RC model industry. He reiterated one again that the Chieftain is the sole property of Haya ltd U.K. and has been designed, manufactured and assembled by Haya ltd’s team in there own China based manufacturing facility and has been branded to reflect this ownership. He also pointed out no other company has had input or ownership of the Chieftain nor will any other company be selling or producing the Chieftain unless specifically authorised through Haya ltd U.K.
He was also quite amused when questioned about having family connections to the Heng Long company. His reply was “ life might be much simpler if I was so lucky. Unfortunately I have no blood or other family ties to them “. So We think that clears that misconception up once and for all.
He was happy to confirm Haya had used some of the same common components as HL. He explained his reasoning behind this decision as follows, “these components are available to a number of manufactures of RC models from suppliers in China, they are already in production and have a proven record in the RC market and are readily available to the hobby community world wide so why go to the trouble and expense of re-inventing the wheel”.
As for the electronics package we’ve been informed this was again bought by Haya ltd from a common manufacturer based in China for the same reasons as mentioned previously and these products are readily avalible to various RC model company’s. Andrew has told us he did not know HL was using the same system in there premium all metal tanks until he made some calls to China after we let him know of fasttracks post here on RCU and he was concerned as some aspects of the system he ordered were supposed to be exclusive to Haya ltd. As we had not seen or heard of the HL 6.1 system before we mistakenly assumed it was exclusive to the Haya ltd Chieftain and can only apologise for not getting it right and being guilty of shooting from the lip and not checking facts first.
Andrew from Haya ltd has also asked us to take this opportunity to remind everyone that Haya ltd U.K. has a website and he is happy to directly address any concerns or questions customers may have about any of his products.
Sorry about the long reply gents, just trying to give an honest review of a product from a hobby point of view and cover the points raised in the thread. There are a few points worth looking at and the HL V6.1 system is one of these points. Can anyone supply a link to this system as I spent over an hour looking on the net and found nothing other than the HL V6.0 being mentioned.