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Banana Hobby Warning

Old 08-04-2012, 03:42 AM
  #26  
TUMBLER
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Default RE: Banana Hobby Warning

I always heard the horror stories about BH, but my buddy and I just took a chance ordered planes from them and both received the planes within a couple days no problem. Could be we just got lucky, but I guess you can have a good experience with them.

Old 08-04-2012, 01:34 PM
  #27  
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Default RE: Banana Hobby Warning

I ended up distroying my F18 with my bare hands. It flew pathetically. The canopy blew off the first flight and the flying time was like 1.5 min. I took it home and tore it to shreads. Problem resolved.
Old 08-04-2012, 05:35 PM
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Default RE: Banana Hobby Warning


ORIGINAL: AndyAndrews

I ended up distroying my F18 with my bare hands. It flew pathetically. The canopy blew off the first flight and the flying time was like 1.5 min. I took it home and tore it to shreads. Problem resolved.

Andy,

I'm surprised you didn't blow it away with your wife's pistol'a like I thought you were going to do to the T.V. at breakfast at the Springfield Inn !!!! [X(] Too funny !!!


Danno
Old 08-10-2012, 09:33 PM
  #29  
rpm303
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Default RE: Banana Hobby Warning

I had purchased a $500 mig from banana hobby and had a radio malfunction on the maidan flight.malfunction of the vectored thrust nozzles that put the plane in a roll that I could not recover from. Needless to say after the hours and hours trying to get some resolution, I got no where. I even tried to dispute it with my credit card company.
With no resolution in sight, I decided to post a video on YouTube and I detailed the issues with this plane and duplicated it as well.
I had also shown my turbine jets to show I was no newb to the hobby.
Over 10,000 views and pages of bad comments aimed at banana hobby, they contacted me to give me a new mig if I would take down the video.
They gave me a new plane,which I promptly sold, and I took down the video.
With all said and done, the owner (Pete) had admitted to me that he'd experienced the same issue on the bench during assembly.
BUYER BEWARE with this company !!! [:'(]
Old 08-11-2012, 10:23 AM
  #30  
airpain
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Default RE: Banana Hobby Warning

I am amazed that Banana Hobby has been able to stay in business with such an inferior product. I was foolish enough to try them twice but never again and I will post as many negative responses on Banana Hobby as I can. From extremely poor quality control to lousy foam and too much brittle plastic it only takes one small mishap to total one of their planes out. In addition the planes are poorly balanced from a design standpoint and most of them are too heavy for the installed stock power packs. One of the few people I have seen sucessfully fly a Banana Hobby plane is "Pete" and I bet he does a lot of editing in his videos! By the way is this guy "Pete" who demonstrates the planes also the owner of the company? Banana Hobby's "come on" is an inexpensive and good looking airplane but one that flys lousy and breaks too easily.
Old 08-11-2012, 10:52 AM
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Eddie P
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Default RE: Banana Hobby Warning

These guys are just discount retailers for toy Chinese model airplanes. They have nothing to do with the development aside from maybe asking the producer to equip the models a certain way to save $$. As far as I have been told, "Pete" is a public face poster kid for the business. The owner is a Chinese business man. He may have an ownership stake in the business... I suspect it's a minor one if at all.

Very recently Banana Hobbies has made a big move to edge Nitroplanes out of the "higher end" foamie market by selling some of the better FMS wabirds. BH used to mostly peddle a high percentage of it's inventory made up of junk stuff but now they are trying to go up scale in the foamie marker (if there is an upscale, it's just starting now but it's making head way) Some of those are really nice actually, though all foamies have their issues and must be looked over very carefully. Screws tightened, some reinforcements made, etc. Some of these foamies can turn out to be really nice actually. The size of these types are growing and they are coming up to speed rapidly. Though this has nothing to do with Banana Hobbies. They are just a snake oil vendor.

The real manufacturers (most located in mainland China) have a lot of hobbiests regularly emailing them about how to improve these things. Go over to RCG and you will see hoards of thread all about the nicer models like the 67" P-51/P-47, the 64" Su-35, 90mm F-86, etc. Some of these are very nice now but it's the efforts of the modelers that make it that way - you pull them out of the box and it looks like a RTF airplane - BUT the detail work begins just like any other model airplane you aren't finished when you cover it/paint it. You just started the detail work with the installation. Same thing - except these have some "de-installation and re-installation" required. If you want to know who is actually making these foamies work it's the every day hobbiest. These guys are making it happen and sending feedback to the manufacturers direct. BH will say they were part of the development of a product but as soon as the product blows up in their face they have nothing to do with the ownership of the liability. That tells you how honest they are being with their customers and with themselves. Nothing new here, this is old school human experience stuff that goes well beyond the scope of a hobby board.

As far as the response that BH gives to customers, that is a separate issue. Quality control management is squarely on their shoulders for what they agree to sell - and you can judge them for that. But don't judge them for the state of the art foamie market being sub hobby grade. It is what it is, buyer beware while sifting for the gems among the turds.
Old 08-11-2012, 07:02 PM
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airpain
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Default RE: Banana Hobby Warning

Thank you for the very thoughtfull response. It's nice to be on a forum where we can disagree but still remain civil with one another. Sifting through the turds to find the gems could get a little expensive if not quite impossible. However, reviews on blogs like these and from people like you do make the job a little easier finding decent product from companies like Banana Hobby.
Having dealt with the Chinese on several occasions it is possible to get whatever your needs may be from Chinese manufactures. State of the art junk or true state of the art. The Chinese are fully capable of supplying a very good RC aircraft but even there you get what you pay for. I feel BH is 99% responsible for the state of the art product it requests and gets from China. The Chinese are simply giving BH what it requests for the least amount of money. BH is fully aware of what they are getting and they are not just simply at the mercy of what the Chinese or others are capable of manufacturing. BH is calling the shots. The Hobbists do drive the industry and perhaps BH is finally feeling the heat on their questionable business practices. Unfortunately, many who buy from BH are first time buyers and not experienced RC hobbyists. I tried a couple of BH airplanes intended for my grandson, a first time flyer. The foam was very poor quality, way too much brittle plastic, poorly bananced aircraft, poor quality control, the planes were very heavy with undersized power pacts and they were misrepresented as for first time flyers. The Chinese had nothing to do with any of these issues including manufacturing issues. They filled the request that BH gave them. Cheap, good looking airplanes that often fly poorly and crumble even in a light mishap. Shame on Banana Hobby!
Old 08-11-2012, 09:32 PM
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The one thing that can get me very disappointed about this whole subject is the huge numbers of guys (and gals) that have been turned off to RC based on their initial purchase from BH turning into a nightmare. I've had my beefs with RC Club politics before but one thing that a club will do is you tend to have some good support and ideas on what works and what doesn't. BH preys on the uninformed non club flyers mostly - the park flyer culture - where they can pick off guys one by one with an uninformed impulse buy and loads of trashy borderline false internet advertising. It really hits the RC community by turning away more guys than it attracts. It hurts us all really.

Back to the idea that there are a few good models that they sell but there will always be upgrades necessary and that means the true cost of ownership is more than it appears and much more time than most guys think they are in for. For example, if you buy an Eflite ARF from Horizon you will pay about $275 for a 50 inch prop warbird. It will fly right out of the box and last a long time and you will fly it far more than work on it. If you buy a "non good" 50 inch warbird from BH, you'll pay about $120. It will fly right out of the box but each flight something will break. You'll realize the retracts are junk and the ESC will catch on fire. Then after 10 hours of shop time and multiple mail order purchases of $50 here and $75 there and $40 in hidden shipping charges you are at $280 total and down a whole lot of free time monkeying with the project and a trash can full of junk electronics and burned foam pieces. But your airplane is flying if not just out of spite. AND you better know what you are doing in RC or you'll be dead in the water - never know what hit you with the junk plane. If you buy the "good" plane for $200 from BH you'll still need to replace the retracts with $40 plus $20 shipping so you are at $260. So for 5 hours of shop time you saved $15. You payed yourself $3 per hour of shop time to get the turd stink of a diamond in the rough and you had to use a lot of experience or some research and help to get it nice Let's see, I pay my marine repair shop $100 an hour... (You only know what is good and what is junk by investing time in build threads on these products!!)

Recently BH has moved into selling higher end stuff. They are going to get some business from a lot more real modelers who might know better but they can't get these products easily from elsewhere. So they sink or swim in this environment IMHO. Sooner or later there will either be new, unheard of tales of decent customer service or there will be more cries for a lynch mob from some of the long time guys in the hobby. It will be interesting. I'm standing by to see.
Old 08-12-2012, 12:21 PM
  #34  
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Default RE: Banana Hobby Warning

I thought I was buying a high end edf jet and I still got turd.
On the video of the plane flying,it looked like a solid performer and plenty of power. Boy what a surprise I got on take off. The plane would bearly climb out. I firmly believe the plane in the video was modified from it's stock configuration. Without stating this in the video, it amounts to fraud. I know some will say maybe your batteries were the problem and I say nay nay.45c batteries were more than was recommended. Anyways, they know for the most part the products they sell are subpar and ther customer service is the worst I have ever experienced.
Old 08-12-2012, 08:52 PM
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Default RE: Banana Hobby Warning

I'm in total agreement with your last post so I won't add any further comments. I do hope that people starting out in RC will read these forums and then make an intelligent choice on their initial RC purchases avoiding Banana Hobby at all costs. Many years ago there was a radio and tv company called "Curtis Mathes" and in the beginning they made and sold the very worst radio and television sets. Many of their tv's caught on fire and burnt several houses to the ground. Then a brilliant idea hit "Curtis Mathes" management. Lets change our advertisng strategy and say we
now sell the best and most expensive tv's in America. Their quality did improve some but basically they were still the same lousy company they had always been and they eventually went out of business. Thanks for your informed input on this forum. Happy flying!

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