All newbies in this hobby are scared off by the prices they see initially.

A $200.00 - $300.00 cost for a good TX for instance, appears to be simply too much to deal with.

However ( as I too found out the hard way ) that "view" ends up costing you FAR MORE in the long run if you keep going.

I purchased a couple of cheap TX's. I immediately discovered that they did not have the features I needed.
So instead of doing the smart thing and getting a decent TX, I looked for a very cheap alternative....

After a while I ended up with a collection of incrementally better TX's.

At the end I had spent far more than I would have from the start getting a decent TX. Silly me.

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That's not to say you cannot get bargains... IF you are willing to experiment a bit and take SOME risks....

I've purchased HUNDREDS of cheap $7.00-$9.00 high torque standard servos from Hobby King and have not had a single one fail. Yet better name brand servos have both failed and been bad out of the box.

Yet I've also purchased a dozen 1300 Micro servos from them, and it they are subjected to more than 4.8v even for a few seconds, the servos are ruined.

The .46 Tower Engines and .47 GMS engines I purchased years ago for about $60.00-$70.00 all are still running just fine though they have long been discontinued.