KC Elite Veteran Location: WA
| I am convinced you can make an economic argument for these toys once you develop preferences, habits and have patterns.
I figure airframe cost x2, fuel costs for how much flying I want to do (more than I really get to) and that is my budget, has always worked for me every year.
if one is to compare a 90 size electric to a 90 size glow, one has to distinguish what has the performance they want.
electrics screw this up because the operating cost cannot be figured out for the long run, you could just take battery cost x2 and probably be in the ball park, but now its more than whatever your glow figure comes out to.
you're not buying a calling card, a battery is like fuel, film, food..... it has a shelf life and has needs to attend to, you can't escape maintenance.
more flying makes better flying, right? remember you only need one tank of fuel to fly a 90.....
the batteries (considering two 'packs' as one set, semantics aside) are a 640.00 part that the machine cannot fly without.
most people will need 1280.00 of batteries and two astro 109s at another 250.00......1500.00+ to match their habits with glow helis.
there is no such thing as buying all the "fuel" upfront (this is very important to grasp for anyone out there who thinks otherwise), you are not going to get 500 flights for 640.00, trust me I have many times more flights than any battery will ever achieve in a lab, it just doesnt happen in the real world.
In theory it is a "deal" in the EU and AU, but people crash there too.
I would definitely buy this technology for an f3c ship, where it has major advantages over glow in presentation.
I can see why they made it on an extreme chassis, it has to be priced competively (upfront costs) with the popular 90s out there (it is a good deal as far as large electrics go), but I would rather have an FAI airframe for my large electric.
buy what you want, but consider what you want to do with a heli, the price of these things is very easy to figure out once you establish patterns for yourself and know what you want to do. |