John,

a friend of mine bought a Hitec karbonite servo a couple of weeks ago and took it apart to look at the gears, from curiosity. What he found was that most of the gears are ordinary nylon and one or two were karbonite. The box says "karbonite gear train". He complained to Amerang, the UK Hitec importer, got it refunded and an acceptance from Amerang that the "karbonite gear train" is misleading and should be changed.

You are very brave putting Hitec servos in your jet. I wouldn't use them for ballast in a free flight model! 8 weeks ago, much against my better judgement and experience of a friend's consistently faulty Hitecs, I got persuaded by several people in a shop that they have used huge numbers of Hitecs and not had one problem, so I bought 4 hitec digitals. Straight out of the box 2 of the 4 were faulty. I also noticed that 3 had old date labels and confirmed that these were the servos with a software fault at max travel values. I sent them to Amerang to upgrade. Got them back with a note saying "re-programmed and tested". One of the 3 was faulty immediately on switching on the radio. All four are now on their way to a landfill site.

H