amain/hobbyzone/fliterest

[jolfstn74]

Whois? Try this: if you buy something from amainhobby.com or hobbyzone.com and you had registered as a customer on their store's site, log into or create an account on one of the others and you will find records of your purchase at the other merchant there. Now explore the available inventories, they're identical,with the same items on back order. I am an American consumer and I vote with my purchases,I began buying at flite test instead of amain because I enjoy the podcasts & YouTube channel and I naively believed by doing so that I was supporting the production. I might as well stayed where I was,the 3 I named as well as many others are all the same company. Who is the parent company? I am merely curious,at this point some might begin spinning wild conspiracy theories about who it the evil shadow company behind it all when it could be as simple as one or the other bought out the remaining furring times of financial crisis within those other brands and wisely maintained the separate names & websites so as not to compromise the extant brand loyalty from current customers. Who owns all this? I simply want to know who I'm dealing with. Can you imagine the frustration of the dissatisfied flite test store customer believing he has switched merchants now buying from amain upon his realizing he was peeing in the same pot all along?

 

[CarolineTyler]

Does this answer your question on Flite test and Amain?

 

[PsyBorg]

Things that make ya go hrrrrrmmmmm....

So far I have tracked this back a bit. Not sure if or where Amain and FT ties in yet. Saw this...

"On December 9, 2013, Horizon announced that the company was being bought by a group of investors led by Horizon's CEO, Joe Ambrose. The group includes Minneapolis-based Mill City Capital L.P. and Champaign-based Armory Capital LLC founded by Jacob Ambrose" Rusty Freeland and Greg Lykins are also founders of Armory capitol LLC

Armory Capitol LLC as stated by Jacob Ambrose "Feb 10, 2014 - Jacob Ambrose said the August C. Meyer Jr. family is a source of the company's capital " taken from a news piece News.Gazzet.com gotten in my search below

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon_Hobby

https://www.google.com/search?ei=tE...JIBAzYuMZgBAKABAaoBB2d3cy13aXo&sclient=psy-ab

So it looks like Horizon Hobby falls under an investment group. If you look deeper then you see a lot of other companies are also under Horizon from prior acquisitions. "It is also the parent company for Arrma, Axial, Losi, Proboat, ECX, Dynamite, Spektrum, E-Flite, Hangar 9, Top Flite, Blade, Vaterra, Monokote, Duratrax."

So being that they are an investment company Im gonna take a wild guess they link to Amain / FT somehow thru Horizon Hobby.

 

[LitterBug]

I guess the question becomes, do you want Flite Test for the content and community, or for the store? Having a partner to offload the store to freed up more time for them to focus on things like content, FliteFest, and Edgewater. I support them for the community and kits. I have other local vendors (which also partner with them) that I get the majority of my electronics, quad frames, and foamies from.

 

[Pony1023]

As far as look and feel to the websites, you can add hobbytown.com to the list as well.

If you really want to have a interesting read, tied to Horizon as the parent company, start with the Las Vegas casino Circus Circus, taking you to Circus hobbies, which then you will land on Horizon. Well maybe I was the only one that found it interesting. I as a teenage, remember Circus hobbies in all the magazines in the 80's. When I had no money, but had lovely dreams of flying. the people at my local Hobbytown store, brought me up to speed, and then some research online confirmed their story.

Mighty shout out to FT for helping it be quicker, cheaper and having online videos to re-spark my interest as an adult. Along with the changes in technology, not only helping on cost for initial purchase and speed of building, but also saving money on expenses due to making it easier to learn how to fly by using SIMs and flight controllers. I still spend money when I make a mistake, or thee is a mishap with the technology. But I feel the days spend fixing a balsa accident, is far different these days between foam planes, and even cheaper with foam board.

 

[Aireal Anarchist]

I figured this out first order I placed with FT
I had a frsky R9 receiver in my ebay cart, another R9 receiver saved in cart on another site (cant remember ATM) and found one R9 on the FT website...I wanted to buy all three as these are getting VERY difficult to find.....I bought the one from here on the FT store....then went to ebay Amain seller 2 sec later and the seller said sorry out of stock AFTER I bought it....2 min later I went to buy the third one I found and it too went out of stock that same min....

didnt quite get the connection till I started to track the package to learn that the ebay seller amain was shipping me a receiver????
they told me out of stock!.... I had to go to paypal to see if I had been charged for 2 R9's from 2 sellers.....Nope just one sale from flitetest
thats when I realized FT was drop shipping and caused all this confusion

learning all 3 sellers were working off one inventory I was disapointed to only get one item of the 3 that I wanted...but I was happy to see FT got the sale & commission.

 

[LitterBug]

I figured this out first order I placed with FT
I had a frsky R9 receiver in my ebay cart, another R9 receiver saved in cart on another site (cant remember ATM) and found one R9 on the FT website...I wanted to buy all three as these are getting VERY difficult to find.....I bought the one from here on the FT store....then went to ebay Amain seller 2 sec later and the seller said sorry out of stock AFTER I bought it....2 min later I went to buy the third one I found and it too went out of stock that same min....

didnt quite get the connection till I started to track the package to learn that the ebay seller amain was shipping me a receiver????
they told me out of stock!.... I had to go to paypal to see if I had been charged for 2 R9's from 2 sellers.....Nope just one sale from flitetest
thats when I realized FT was drop shipping and caused all this confusion

learning all 3 sellers were working off one inventory I was disapointed to only get one item of the 3 that I wanted...but I was happy to see FT got the sale & commission.

From what I can tell, (and FrSky is VERY vague) The new R9s will work with the old R9M. They can run the ACCESS or ACCST firmware including the same 02/19 ACCST firmware that I run on all my R9 variants. This is my "best guess" since they post the ACCST firmware for the R9 2019/OTA. FrSky has done their community no favors with this mess they created and lack of compatibility charts and other documentation. Even vendors can't keep it straight.

EDIT: In the last week, FrSky has once again gone and messed all that up. Went to grab the links and it's all changed to the 11/19 ACCST.

 

[Aireal Anarchist]

From what I can tell, (and FrSky is VERY vague) The new R9s will work with the old R9M. They can run the ACCESS or ACCST firmware including the same 02/19 ACCST firmware that I run on all my R9 variants. This is my "best guess" since they post the ACCST firmware for the R9 2019/OTA. FrSky has done their community no favors with this mess they created and lack of compatibility charts and other documentation. Even vendors can't keep it straight.

EDIT: In the last week, FrSky has once again gone and messed all that up. Went to grab the links and it's all changed to the 11/19 ACCST.

this is why I was trying to stock up the parts drawer....at this point in time I have 2 other R9's located and ofcourse the price up another $35 to now $80 including shipping....the damned RX is almost as much as I paid for the TX

if anyone runs across any FrSky R9 ACCST protocol long range receivers drop me a link please

 

[Dunfielder]

I was wondering why when I ordered my props from Amain that the address they were coming from was exactly the same as when I ordered my Power Pack C from FliteTest. Now I know. Not concerned at all though.

 

[jolfstn74]

Again, my concern is the concealment of these facts, maybe concealment is a strong word, but an uninitiated consumer believing he is buying from one vendor vs a different vendor, perhaps having had a bad experience and switching vendors but buying from the same inventory pool all along, the same companies profit no matter where he buys from. "Thank you for shopping at hobby conglomerate!"

 

[randyrls]

This is called "aggregation". It means that I post an item on my high traffic web site, when an order comes in it is handed it off to the originator. This can cause problems for consumers. Hobby Town is also working thru AMAIN.