Geeze, why does everything have to turn into a radio brand thing..... My 12 Spektrum DSM2 receivers all work flawlessly, and I am confident my DMX will too. I have used Hitec and Tower servos without one failure. Ask a room full of people and you will get a book full of answers, I just wouldn't listen to anyone specifically brand bashing, it just goes downhill. I have flow JR, Futaba and Spectrum and the only issues I ever had was on an older Futaba FM, but those days are gone.

I agree about the worry thing though, if your going to second-guess your servos on every flight, its not worth it. Its like loaning $$ to a friend, don't do it if your going to do nothing but worry about it. I don't loan any more than I am willing to lose, its the same way here.

Dave

Having flown for 35yrs now, I have had my issues on occaision with all the major brand stuff, and the occaisional Cheapie HK stuff. I have had a Futaba 9CAP quit talking to a PCM receiver, I have had a Hitech 7ch transmitter loose the rudder channel, and lost a pattern plan to a brown out on a Airtronics RDS8000, and I have had switches go bad and batteries fail in flight due to bad welds on the tabs.
I have had brand new Spektrum Digital servos jitter like they just pounded a Monster drink, and I have had a Hitec High Torgue Digital fail on my Turbines flaps. I just lost my Sig Sundancer using a Specktrum AR500 receiver, when it had dozens of flights on my 10X FM gear previous to that. Yet the $6 orange HK receiver in my glider hasnt had a single problem.
I think all companies have their problems, and what some of the folks a have said, you do tend to get what you pay for! I am not willing to trust my $3000 turbine to a $10 servo or receiver. It runs a JR 12X MV with a 1221 receiver and 4 satillite receivers, and medium priced $40-$50 Hitec digital servos.

Bottom line, you have to make the educated decsion, if your going to dump a grand into that next plane, why on earth wouldn't you trust that the best equipment you can afford is in it?
I have yet to see a Top gun competitor running cheap gear! I have never run across anyone running their new BVM KingKat with Bluebirds. Food for thought.

Torque specs for 8411's are actually 155 oz. (11 kg.) @ 4.8 v and 188 oz. (13.5 kg) @ 6 v. Therefore 197 oz. would be closer to 14 kg. and 5.6 kg. would be approx. 80 oz. (quite a bit of difference between these specs).
A $31 servo that will perform the same as a 8411? I don't think so.

As has already been said, you get what you pay for.

You may pay a bit extra for a well known brand high end servo, but some of the reason for this is that these companies do alot of R&D so as to provide a quality product that will perform as stated. This then filters down to cheaper servos from that same company that benefit from that R&D.
A product with similar specs from a "cheap" brand company that is considerably cheaper, is cheaper for a reason. You simply are not going to get the same quality and performance from a servo that costs 1/4 of the price. The cheapies i have seen have a fair bit of play in the gear train.
You do occasionally get very good prices for brand name servos from cheaper brand outlets, but you can also be getting copies.
Also just because some of the brand name companies are getting there products manufactured in China, Malaysia or where ever and they are made in the same factory as cheapies, doesn't mean they are made with the same quality parts/materials etc. If something is cheaper it's because they are using cheaper (inferior) parts/materials and the same quality is not there. If something costs $100 to manufacture from one company, you will not get the same product from another company 4 times cheaper, unless cheaper parts are used. This then reduces the quality of the product.
As one eg. I have found even in the JR range of servos, the cheaper range will not centre as well as the more expensive range. I am quite prepared to pay more for a servo that when the stick is put back to centre, the servo will go back to the same position every time. This is just one example of the benefits of a brand name servo. Reliability is another. I have been flying for 17 years and in that time i have used JR exclusively and only had one servo failure. I've never had a Tx or Rx problem. I never take off wondering if i am going to have a servo failure. It actually never crosses my mind.

One thing to consider on price is the following:

Most model items today are done in Asia (not just China). A company having a recognized brand name buys the item, them add his badge and profit margin. Then the distributors add their bite too and finally the end seller.
When it come to consumer, price has doubled or tripled from original one at factory door.
What Hobbyking - and others- are doing is bypassing all these middle mens. Their business model is simple: Buy direct from factory and add just their margin.In some caes they don´t even have to stock, they use a Just in Time method. And as they sell MUCH more, can afford less margins. End result is that price become much cheaper to us.
This model is disrupting all the old , traditional one. Expect several compnaies that do not adapt to belly up soon....
BY same token, HK won´t be alone much longer. This is a mean. competitive world on business.

Note: I´m not saying everything sold by HK is good. I have made over 30 purchases and soon learned that they sell very oood stuff at an outstanding price but there is crap for sale as well. I started then avoiding the bottom price items, and selecting the top ones. Some of them are clearly the same part, made at same factory, just don´t have the famous badge attached
to it. But at 50-40% off

But some items I still prefer Japanese, they are still much better than anyone else on quality and reliability. I don´t see Koreans or Chinese companies catching up any time soon.
I trust critical and expensive items to them _ engines, radios, servos.

I have only 25 years exp in fly and building models, yes you do get whay you pay for to a point.....

I have been buying the HK Orange coloured standard servos $3.00 each or someting crazy, as I have had other "bargin Servos" crap them selfs, I have only
been using them in low stress enviroments eg old timers and Sports planes, so far none have failed. I am also using old Futaba s28's in my Das Ugly Stick, even though it has been crashed 3 or more times these old servos just keep going, It was servos like these that build Futaba's Brand . My last crash happened when my old Futaba Radio 8U craped it self!!!(Not a HK Servo) I replaced my 8U with a 9c, 8 years of service from a radio with no issues is very good. I have found Hitech servos to be also very good, but some of the small ones have a very fragile gear set, I had 2 82's strip teeth in a small 25 size sports plane.

I don't think HK servos are as good quality as Futaba or Hitech ones, so far the HK orange ones are working fine, but rember I don't fly turbine jets or 1/3 scale, If I could afford to I would be fitting top grade Futaba, or Hitech ones.

I think that a basic futaba servo eg a 3003 would out last a $3 orange one but as time goes on the HK servos are going to get better and will soon be on par with a futaba.


Johnkpap

bw, I quoted your post because you write "Having flown for 35 years".
I have flown for 10 years longer the first period with scratch built radios without any problem but, about 35 years ago I did buy my Multiplex transmitter.
See the photographs, I controll all my planes with the transmitter over these 35 years, much more than on the photographs,
Is there one reason to buy another? Do I read about "brown out"?

Before my Multiplex, I did fly 26.995 MHz. color "Brown"!! Never had one single "brown out" only "brown on", see photograp 5.

(Only for my Orion I use another transmiitter, Multiplex, I received from an estate and I want to have "in the air" for memorial reasons!)

About 35 years ago I payed 1600 Dutch guilders for my new Multiplex Profi Modul; transmitter, receiver, four servos and battery's, .


This is classic RC pattern flying and that's why I have to smile about computer radio's!
Oh, maybe a good advice, mount your servos far away from the center of gravity, it must be possible to mount these in the wings for the ailerons and in the tail for elevator and rudder, vibrations will reduce the hysteresis of the friction of the linking!!!

Taurus Flyer

Taurus Flyer,
The brown out I described about the Airtronics was due to 5 servos on a 4.8 volt receiver pack momentarily drawing more power than normal off the battery, this was due to a retract servo that stalled on mechanical retracts, thus taking power away from the receiver momentarily, causing the 2.4 receiver to re-boot/reset. At the altitude it was at, it was too long to recover before crashing. Had the receiver been 72mhz, this would not have affected it at all, and the plane would still be here.

Specktrum has had it's fair share of early brown outs too. And this latest issue I had with the AR500 receiver, now that I have done the google search, shows that Horizon had a slew of issues with them, and it Looks like the China based manufacturer supplied cheap faulty parts for the receiver, and Specktrum yanked them from production. They can't even be found on their website under discontinued.

Glad to see the old stuff still flying! I love the old ballistic pattern of the 60's thru the 80's, and have a few of my own, although I do like flying the newer radios, I do have a Futaba FG Gold 7 channel converted to Assan 2.4 with a DIY kit from HK.....and it works awesome too!

bw it isn't "Old stuff" !

I bought my new Multiplex Profi Modul transmitter because the original encoder system of my earlier digital proportional system couldn't be extended with mixers.
Sinds I use the Multiplex, the transmitter is frequently updated with my own custom build mixers which I also needed to fly experimemtal airplanes,
These type of mixers still aren't available for "modern" computer radio's and one of these I use for rudder control instead of differential linking of the ailerons.

On the photograph the Robbe Mäxi, equiped with electrical retracts with screw spindle, 1970? , but...... separate battery for the electrical retracts.
in this plane a receiver battery of 500 mAh 4.8 VDC was enough to fly pattern.
The transmitter is the same as I showed in the other post, the retract switch is on the left side below the stick.

Taurus Flyer

One thing that has not been directly mentioned, although R&D is mentioned in the post I reference, is that R&D does cost money. I believe many of the Asian manufacturers are riding on the back of these other well known companies by copying the designs. It still costs a lot of money and time to implement an item into a manufacturing production environment, but not as much if you don't have to pay for the groundwork required to design the item. It's happened many times. Even with the company I work for. Chinese bought one each of a line of equipment from us several years ago. Now, guess what, their making a line of equipment also. Now, does everyone look at their competitors' product to try and identify faults? Of course they do. But hopefully they come up with something better than just a copy they can sell at less cost. Remember, wages in Asian countries are much lower than they are here in USA. No one in USA would work for some of the wages those people will work for. You and I both know some of those wages are way below poverty level.

Neil

Hi Vince,
I use 35.00 to 50.00 dollar brand name digitals. They are usually about 70 to 90 oz in and I choose Futabe, JR and certain Airtronics. Usually the selection is chosen after speaking with the Masters and FAI Pattern flyers. I have found that we don't need anywhere near the torque that we are often buying when fitting servos in 60 sized Classic Pattern ships. I have had lot's of good service from this middle priced brand name digital plan and haven't any failures in 5 years of flying r/c. ( I use big capacity 6 volt rx batts out of fear, too.
Probably doesn't mean all that much, but that has been my experience.
Chris...

good to read...

http://www.rcmodelreviews.com/2.4ghzshootout.shtml