CellTech

I am done with Tower. They have gone from being a price discounter to an overpriced corporation looking for high profits. I have spent tens of thousand of dollars with them over the decades. They have turned into a distributor of Chinese junk and I will no longer do business with them. The last straw was when the expert kid i spoke to through their hobby services told me the reason for my OS engine piston/liner peeling issues is because I ran the engine too lean. Being a control line flyer as well I am use to running my engines on the rich side along with a 22% oil content of 50/50/ Synthetic Castor blend. Evidently not enough Castor oil in the fuel to prevent the peeling. Oh well the kid at customer no service obviously knows more then a modeler of over fifty years. Tower I am done with you. My hobby bucks are now going elsewhere

GaryHarris

I have no problem with Tower and will continue to use them for certain things. They don't offer many kits and as anybody knows that's been in RC for a long time, plane kits are not the money makers. And face it, RC Planes are not the major market maker in RC.

For kits I use Graves.

Gray Beard

My Feedback: (-1)

Tower people have known more about there products then consumers for decades, another reason I left them. Every engine ever sent to them was a lean run problem. I once sent in an engine to there service, it was to be fired up to see what the trouble was, they stripped it down, told me it was a lean run and needed to have perts replaced that cost $28.00 less then a new engine. I had them send it back. I had it checked out by our local engine guy, he saw nothing wrong in it? I put it back together, it still didn't run, replaced the needle valve assembly and it ran without ever having a dead stick for there years, then I sold it in a plane. From then on I started doing my own engine work and haven't bought a new OS in decades. That was when they lost me as a costumer, a couple of decades ago.
Why anyone would use there over priced services is beyond me yet I have friends that place orders to them on a regular basis?

carrellh

Graves buys Great Planes, Goldberg, Dynaflite, and Top Flite from the Hobbico conglomerate; just like every other US dealer. I will be very surprised if they maintain pricing on these items that is much different than Tower's.

brenthampton79

Really? Is that what we do now is complain all the time? Tower has been selling most of their kits for the same price forever it seems, I know that the price of the 50 size extra kit is the same price that it was when I was 15 and thats been about 15 years ago. How many people around here is still working at the same wage rate they were 15-20 years ago, paying 73 cents for gas, etc. Tower has been serving our hobby for a long time and offering people that arent so lucky to live 10 minutes from a lhs and this is how we say thank you?

Well here it goes for me

TOWER HOBBIES THANKYOU from Brent for offering products at great prices for such a long time and not raising the prices more than needed to make a huge profit. I really appreciate offering a discount for me to be a member of your club of free shipping, 20% discounts and etc.

really guys if you join their club you still get the planes for almost what you did 10 years ago if you use the coupons. plus im sure to ship those boxes of wood its free for them

ok soap box put back in the closet now

aymodeler

My Feedback: (3)

I think that the age of mass produced kits is over. Kits are a niche specialty market with niche specialty pricing. I doubt that Top Flite kits will be around too much longer. I have worked in consumer goods long enough to know that when a brand or product line stops growing, it will get harvested for any residual value, then dropped when its earnings contribution fall below a level where keeping it on is more of a distraction than its worth. Top Flite kits have clearly been in a harvest stage for quite some time (when was the last new kit released?), so I expect we are nearing the end

Take heart though, there are a lot of great small kit manufacturers out there still (from Stevens Aero and Mountain models on the small side to SkyShark and Savage in the mid-size range and Ziroli and Meister Scale on the large end).

I hope these guys will be around for a while, but I have begun my own hoarding process just to be sure!

CellTech

Spoken like a dedicated employee.

brenthampton79

Sorry I'm not an employee of tower, my brother and I own HFS LLC.