I posted this into the Walkera sub-forum but didn't get many hits or any replies so I'm opening up the discussion in the general electric heli forum. I'm trying to choose replacement micro servos for my heli. I guess they might be interesting to the general audience as possible alternatives to the Hitec or Tower Pro micros.

I find (newer) GWS servos to work quite well (Older ones seemed to have centering issues). Futaba servos are also quite nice, but they'll all run you near the same price as the Hitec ones. As a side note, many of the micro servos that are produced by off brand (i.e some RC company you've never heard of) are usually the same servos you get with tower pro. (Not saying this is the case with your link, only as a general reference) They're all made by the same companies and then just rebranded depending on the distributor. I actually find the TP servos to work very well for their price. They aren't anywhere near as precise as Hitec (or any of the other brand name) servos are, so I would not use them for helicopter cyclic or tail control, but for park flyer planes and small cars, they're perfect.

In particular, I like the GWS Naro series, and the Futaba S3110's. Bluebird servos are also decent, if noisy.

Are these also known as Supertec? As in on this page: [link=http://www.servoshop.co.uk/index.php?pid=STECNAROBB&area=Servo]http://www.servoshop.co.uk/index.php?pid=STECNAROBB&area=Servo[/link]

They also do the Titch 44 which is a little slower with less torque (but cheaper): [link=http://www.servoshop.co.uk/index.php?pid=STECTCH44&area=Servo]http://www.servoshop.co.uk/index.php?pid=STECTCH44&area=Servo[/link]

I'm also interested in these: [link=http://www.servoshop.co.uk/index.php?pid=CM502001&area=Servo]http://www.servoshop.co.uk/index.php?pid=CM502001&area=Servo[/link]

Thanks for your detailed reply...

I recently bought some HS55s from servoshop. £9.99 can't really go wrong. Maybe £3 more expensive than the carsons, but not double



Si

1 off maybe but 4 off, HS-55s are £35.00 and the Carsons are ~£24.00, which is £11 or more than a whole servo. It doesn't sound like much but I am a student on a very tight budget * (hence my purchase of a Walkera in the 1st place and not a T-Rex or X400). As a result I've recently turned into one of those anally-retentive people who resents paying over the odds for premium branded goods based simply upon popularity.

I guess where I'm headed is that it's clear that the HS-55 is the benchmark, the Naro HP/BB has better specs and recognisably branded so is thus priced. Are the Carsons, which are 30% cheaper than the HS-55s with similar specs on paper, 30% less precise or are they 30% less "fashionable".

I'm perfectly willing to accept that in servos, as in everything else (micro helicopters included), you get what you pay for. In any case this might all be academic since anything I buy will be better than the Walkera rubbish that I've got right now

* Yes I'm also aware that RC helis are not the hobby to get into on a very tight budget!

The only thing I can suggest is give it a whirl.

I suspect that a lot of the servo's come out of the same factory anyway. Other than the electronics, the Esky, JP Twister and HS55s are, as far as I can tell, mechanically identical, so the gear sets between these are interchangeable!

I have used all 3 sorts on my Twister 3D and HoneyBee CP2, and TBH I'm not good enough to tell the difference. What I have noticed is the HS55 gears are maybe a smidge more robust in little knocks.

I went for the branded HS55s because I was hoping for better crash resistance. The old saying "buy cheap, buy twice" maybe isn't true, but I'm sure at least one of my crashes would have stripped gears on the cheaper servos, but the HS55 gears survived.

One way to think of it is to not go to the Student Union one night, and the beer money saved could go towards the heli (Though casting my mind back to my student days I think this would be difficult )

Sounds good, maybe I'll suck-em and see. Interesting about the ESky servos being so similar to Hitec; they're available on eBay very cheaply so I could try those too.

I'm a mature* student in the final year of an engineering degree, don't see much of the inside of the union at the moment unfortunately My helicopter's about the only thing that gets me away from my dissertation

Thanks for your replies!

* In age at least