Hi fellas,
Thank you for your replies and willingness to share your thoughts and opinions. As I stated earlier, this thread was meant to solicit fellow modelers opinions on the matter. It is a global market out there, and I'm simply curious to see if people are buying from abroad, it makes sense, and apparently people have been. That's awesome! Unfortunately a distributor/re-seller has chosen to interject to make this about them, that is their prerogative and is neither here nor there, I suppose. I don't have a particular preference regarding a direct reply or a PM, as there is no hidden agenda here. I only later added the comment of feeling free to PM me because I suspect people don't want to get mixed in the drama, and especially when a thread could get toxic. In fact this may be my last reply due to this.
The pricing I've mentioned has been rolled out in Europe since at least August, that is as far back as I can tell. The position we're hearing is that production volume is up and supply chain has helped reduce costs, sounds great. This in turn is driving potential margin to be passed along to the end user, also sounds great. The problem with the guise is this, when was the last build thread or review video you've seen with a P-220 in it? Have you seen any? Have you seen one? Maybe it's just me, but I haven't, I have heard of maybe one or two guys out there. If tooling is set & volume is up and production is up, where are they? Who's buying these? You make up your own minds.
My opinion, which I have a right to, and that should go without saying, is the following. I suspect the take rate on the 220 has fallen short of forecast, and this is compounded by the fact that there is a smaller displacement motor with the same feature-set right on it's heels. The get-well plan is to reintroduce the same motor at a lower price in order to prime sales. Why? Well, two flops would be disastrous. This motor is expensive and there are pilots out there still feeling the burn from the 180 initial release. Less cost would mean less risk, although it's still the same new technology. I suspect pilots are waiting on someone else to be early adopters, who knows. This is all good I suppose, it's responding to the market. The issue is the early adopters which paid full price and now Ooops... It's all good and I hope many people buy it, it seems like excellent technology, I hope it's a great success. There will be a few people feeling the burn for paying full price, but hay, what can they do when you want to test new tech.
You be the judge, keep your eye's peeled, remember it is a global market out there. There is nothing we need for these jets which we cannot buy from multiple sources. And for goodness sake, find good people, I'd pay extra for that.
Safe flights!
Signing off, skunk.