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.