Hi,
As far as the 8411 gear wear. Yes, I've worn some out...after 500-600 flights and a year and a half of use! Up to that point there was some lash, but it doesn't affect the flying or precision of the plane at all until you put 100's of flights on them. If they wear premuturely, the only reason is becasue they were ganged and they weren't setup right...or the user was more obscessed with a slight amount of lash than what the airplane was flying like. As for Hitec, I've seen all I needed to see from those servos. The in air reprogramming mode (sleep mode after recentering) they come equipped with is something I can do without. There are a vocal few on here who rave about how many servos they've bought from Hitec, and that they've never had failures...great! I'm glad those folks have been that lucky, but after seeing first hand what these things will do to a years work and 10 grand I know I'll never take a risk like that. It would actually be less painful to dig a small hole at the field, take the 10 grand and put it in the hole, and set it on fire. The result would be the same...a smoking hole, and a 10 thousand dollar loss, but you would have all that work and setup that you didn't do, and it would free you up to chuck the Hitecs into the hole along with the 10K that they would have burned anyway. That's like coming out with a free airplane from the deal! Or you could just use good quality servos to begin with and skip all the above. I'll take the little bit of gear wear, and the higher performance, and precision of the 8411 anyday. Like was said by FC... these planes are too expensive to throw bugs into the mix. They can also be dangerous when servos have a mind of their own. I have no reason at all to trust a Hitec product, and I've seen no reason for these continuous failures...if you simply do a search on here you will see that the question has been raised many times, but has never been aswered as to why they do it, other than this date code stuff...sorry to say, the stickers haven't fixed the problem, and haven't answered the question as to why they are still doing it either. Is there any question about the reliability of the JR 8411? Nope Is there on the Hitec's? I think that's abundantly clear! Is it worth the risk? I guess that depends on how much disposable income one has, and how much they like to build.