Hi, I am in pretty same situation. I had a Heng Long pseudo Panther 1:16 plastic airsoft model as first shot. I did realize what I bought after I open the box... Is stupefying to find that the producer mixed the Tiger with Panther...but do not forget, they advertise all of these tanks as toys for +14. So, after a sum of years, I decided to make my own tank using an upgraded metal model as base. I missed some logic steps and now I learn how to put all in place to work. In my world we say "Better is the enemy of good!" and this happened to me, I did not like the original electronics, I took them out from the tank but the new ones have troubles and now I have a no working tank which wait me to focus on it.
First, be sure you are satisfied with the out of box tank behavior. YouTube has a lot of short movies and you can compare all of them. Look on videos and decide what you want from your tank. You will understand why so many of us modify the electronics. If you decide to modify it, be sure you know what you want and how to do it. I bought things and I discovered after that I need to learn a lot of things to put them on work properly. A Heng Long station have 6 channels-commands for the tank. A Taranis X9D station have maximum 32 channels and all programmable individually, in fact is a computer which need to be programmed too. A Tank Command Board TCB is a minicomputer also. The sound cards are programmable, leaving you the possibility to choose what sound and when shall be issued. Is not easy but I really prefer this to the pub customer variant for my life...
These models are the toys for big guys and the correspondence with reality is very important for guys like me. And the decisions comes easy after. So I wish you this one to be just the first step in a better way to spend your time and money!