Planet RC

[Steve Walker 1Participant @stevewalker1]

I will be in touch Dodgy when the missus queries my bargain, getting £3000 worth of gear for £150.

I was speaking about flat screen tv's in the same way a couple of weeks ago. What will we do when the Far East labour market catches up?

[Dodgy Geezer 1Participant @dodgygeezer1]

Posted by Steve Walker 1 on 25/03/2016 15:37:12:

I was speaking about flat screen tv's in the same way a couple of weeks ago. What will we do when the Far East labour market catches up?

Prices of objects don't seem to depend on raw materials/labour costs/profit in the classic Marxist sense any more, and the Austrian Marginal Theory seems to me to describe it better, with a dash of Julian Simon thrown in… Biros were around £30 each in bulk when they first came out…

[Steve Walker 1Participant @stevewalker1]

Yes, but I'm not sure Alfred Marshall anticipated 1.3 billion new faces at the job centre.

[Dodgy Geezer 1Participant @dodgygeezer1]

Posted by Steve Walker 1 on 26/03/2016 08:51:59:

Yes, but I'm not sure Alfred Marshall anticipated 1.3 billion new faces at the job centre.

Well, he had to live through the Depression, and by all accounts he was particularly interested in improving social welfare, so I'm sure he would have been unhappy at that possibility. But how would he contribute to balancing trade in a world where the 'industrial districts' are continent-sized, with all the riches in one area and all the work in another? Unlike Keynes and later economists, my understanding is that he thought things were self-balancing and you shouldn't fiddle with the system.

That's why I added Simon. His 'cornucopia theory' stresses human ingenuity as an economic force, which is all we have to bat with right now – perhaps all we ever had…

[Dave MilbournParticipant @davemilbourn48782]

DG

I really would advise you to take more water with it.

Dave M

[Dodgy Geezer 1Participant @dodgygeezer1]

Posted by Dave Milbourn on 26/03/2016 14:31:49:

DG

I really would advise you to take more water with it.

Dave M

You…you are suggesting… American beer….!!???

[Steve Walker 1Participant @stevewalker1]

Well I'm glad we've worked back to model boats.

Poor labour using ingenuity to self balance the economic forces and finish the bloomin' boat.

[Dave MilbournParticipant @davemilbourn48782]

Posted by Dodgy Geezer on 26/03/2016 15:42:32:

Posted by Dave Milbourn on 26/03/2016 14:31:49:

DG

I really would advise you to take more water with it.

Dave M

You…you are suggesting… American beer….!!???

Yeah – whatever…..

[John Thornton 1Participant @johnthornton1]

I'm wondering whether this might now one of the better budget options: **LINK**

Ikonnik have licensed Hitec's Red protocol, which makes their Txs and Rxs compatible with Hitec gear. (Their KA-6 6 channel receiver is similar to the Hitec Optima, but is around £10 cheaper.)

As well as providing a fresh budget option, this compatibility ought to provide greater longevity should the brand suddenly disappear.

Has anyone tried one yet?

[Dave MilbournParticipant @davemilbourn48782]

My new Hitec Optic 5 finally arrived last week. There has been a problem with deliveries due to politic unrest in the Philippines where the sets are made. It was well worth the wait and my thanks go to J Perkins and Steve Webb Models for keeping me updated with the delivery situation.

The whole set has a quality about it which is lacking in other budget sets. As an example, the sticks have ball-raced bearings and you can change stick mode with a switch and from ratchet to sprung by turning one screw (no tweezers required). The tiny Minima 6 receiver has a proper plastic case, is full-range and is compatible with my other Hitec 2G4 sets; binding is a doddle There is servo-reverse on all four main channels and ATV on ailerons and elevator, and there are two "mixes" which you can select with a simple front-mounted switch to give V-tail or Flapperon mixing (useful for operating twin motors without an on-board mixer). The fifth channel is a 2-position Push On/Push Off button. I paid £63 which just £6 more than the Ikonnik.

All of my radios are now Hitec (Optic 5, Optic 6, Aurora 9 and an old Ranger 3 40MHz) and I can recommend the brand unreservedly. Steve Webb Models (aka Servo Shop) is also an excellent supplier.

"No relationship – just another satisfied customer" as they say.

Dave M

[Dodgy Geezer 1Participant @dodgygeezer1]

Posted by Dave Milbourn on 12/06/2016 23:16:24:

My new Hitec Optic 5 finally arrived last week. …. I paid £63 which just £6 more than the Ikonnik.

….

Indeed, I would say that £55-odd is no longer a 'bargain basement' price. The 'Budget Options' are around the £20 mark.

The cheapest Hobby-King I can see now is £11.19p **LINK**

and my favourite Radiolinks (Iconnik seem to use a similar box and sticks) are up to £30 from a named supplier

**LINK**

and £22 off Ebay….

[Dave MilbournParticipant @davemilbourn48782]

Sorry, DG, but we're at cross purposes. I intended to relate the Optic only to the Ikonnik as mentioned in the posting by John Thornton, but seeing as how you've pulled my favourite soapbox out for me…

The HobbyKing set is only a 2 channel steerwheel radio while the Radiolinks (and its clones) is the nastiest piece of tat I've handled for a long time. It has very few of the features of the Hitec (e.g. no mixing, no ATV, fixed stick mode, no fifth channel) and the manufacturing quality is poor. It's a radio designed for toys, and they generally fail or are quickly broken so they don't need a radio which is going to outlast them.

These barrel-bottom-scraping Chinese radios really are the Trabants and Wartburgs of the RC world but If the bottom line is the only thing that matters then by all means go ahead and fill yer boots. You'll get two or three Radiolinks transmitters in the back of your Tata Nano at a push…

DM

[John Thornton 1Participant @johnthornton1]

Thanks for the info, DM. It seems the best value sets, especially when including quality and reliability among the criteria, now come from some of the top manufacturers.

JT

[Dave MilbournParticipant @davemilbourn48782]

John

As I once said (don't I sound like Geoff Boycott here?), if you buy the most expensive you don't always get everything you want, but if you buy the cheapest you generally get all that you deserve. If your hobby is important to you then you don't want the problems which can arise from buying poorly-made equipment.

After I'd earlier compared these things to old East German-built cars I remembered the occasion when a work-colleague who was notoriously mean arrived for work in a brand-new Lada Riva. "Want a ride in my new car?" he asked another workmate.

"Ray" came the reply, "I'd sooner be seen climbing out of the back of a sheep".

DM

Edited By Dave Milbourn on 13/06/2016 14:08:59

[Tony HadleyParticipant @tonyhadley]

To buy a Hitec at £63 is real good price. Remember buying my Hitec Optic 6 many years ago at twice that price. Like yourself Dave, I am sold on the Hitec brand. In the time I have had this set, other sets have come and gone, the models have since been given a name and placed as one of the named models on the 'model naming' function on the Hitec set.

Over the years, my set has changed from a 40mhz module to a 2.4ghz and now benefits from the installation of the latest firmware, by Hitec now allowing us to plug into their system (with a HPP22 box). Despite it's age, it is still a far superior set to many others available today. I really like the EPA on all channels and the Minima Rx. Haven't figured out the on board mixers yet, but haven't gone into it in too much depth as they are really an aircraft/heli function.

Hitec's new Flash systems look good but perhaps a little to "much", both in price and features for us model boaters, they are really for aircraft flyers. Received a good review in RCME not too long ago.

[Dave MilbournParticipant @davemilbourn48782]

On the other hand this Radiolink set looks altogether a different proposition **LINK**

Superficially it looks very much like the Hitec Flash radios. I wonder how it compares for build quality.

DM

[Kev.WParticipant @kev-w]

I have a FlySky Fs-T6 which performs very well, feels solid enough & at £40 from Amazon fits my pocket nicely, also Rx's for these can be had for less than a tenner from Gearbest

Edited By Kip Woods on 13/06/2016 17:47:55

[Dave MilbournParticipant @davemilbourn48782]

How's the charger and battery pack working, Kip?

Dave M

[Kev.WParticipant @kev-w]

Great Dave thanks, I even took the plunge & stripped down the old blown packs (nowt to lose if it didn't work), found what seemed to be 5 ok cells & cobbled them into 1 pack.

My soldering is not the best, but appears to be holding, the pack looks as if Dr. Frankenstein built it, but will charge up to 6.5v, it gives me about 2/3rds of the time that a new one would, so the cells must still be damaged to an extent. But hey ho, I learned how to do soldering,

[Dodgy Geezer 1Participant @dodgygeezer1]

Posted by Dave Milbourn on 13/06/2016 08:55:01:

Sorry, DG, but we're at cross purposes. I intended to relate the Optic only to the Ikonnik as mentioned in the posting by John Thornton, but seeing as how you've pulled my favourite soapbox out for me…

The HobbyKing set is only a 2 channel steerwheel radio while the Radiolinks (and its clones) is the nastiest piece of tat I've handled for a long time. It has very few of the features of the Hitec (e.g. no mixing, no ATV, fixed stick mode, no fifth channel) and the manufacturing quality is poor. It's a radio designed for toys, and they generally fail or are quickly broken so they don't need a radio which is going to outlast them.

These barrel-bottom-scraping Chinese radios really are the Trabants and Wartburgs of the RC world but If the bottom line is the only thing that matters then by all means go ahead and fill yer boots. You'll get two or three Radiolinks transmitters in the back of your Tata Nano at a push…

DM

Ah, DM, I think the car example you're looking for is less of a Trabant and more of a Skoda. They started cheap, but got better…

I'm not sure we're talking at cross purposes – I was agreeing with you that at the £50-£60 mark you can certainly get a good name make, and you're moving away from the 'budget brands' which can now be got at the £10-£20 cost price. The HobbyKing I mentioned probably deserves any brickbats you can throw (I haven't tried one), but the T4 Radiolink was at £25 when it came out, and gained quite a few followers. None of mine have broken in spite of a fair bit of slopesoaring use, and though they're simple, they DO have Mode Change and V-tail mixing (internal switches), as well as a simple 5th channel upgrade (just add a switch).

As you have pointed out, though, Radiolink may have started cheap, but are building much better radios now. I picked up some T7Fs at £30 a year ago – and they have the full set of services **LINK**

And of course, the AT9 and AT10 do the full 9 yards, including data telemetry. **LINK**

All in all, I think the product range is coming on nicely. The cheap ones are a pretty close match for a Planet (which I don't think ever had a V-tail mixer?).

[Dave MilbournParticipant @davemilbourn48782]

With the proviso that I would be curious to examine an AT9 we will have to agree to differ on the 'barrel-bottom' Radiolinks and their clones. To me they just look and feel cheap and nasty, but I didn't much like the Planet T5 either!

Vive la difference, m'duck.

Dave M

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