Best Quality Manufacturers

dortiz68

Junior Member
With all the plane available today and so many manufacturers it's hard to tell a good deal from a cheap plane. Can you more experienced pilots provide insight into which brands are high quality and which brands to stay away from?

Currently I mostly have E-flight, Parkzone and I just got a Durafly. All seem to be pretty good quality aircraft thus far. Looking to get input for both prop planes as well as EDFs. Your feedback is greatly appreciated!

Daniel
 

HawkMan

Senior Member
It really depends. some manufacturers are all around quality but expensive, others have good and bad stuff, others have good stuff, but you might need to check over a few things before you take off the first time. And others are just cheap crap. there's no definite answer that won't include a massive list with exceptions one way or the other.
 

RAM

Posted a thousand or more times
I usually search the product I'm interested on the internet. I can usually find enough forum posts and test videos to decide what might be a better product. Any brand can put out a low quality version. They almost have to in order to compete with Chinese import prices. Price typically = quality but some open source products are low priced and high quality.
 

dortiz68

Junior Member
Nerdnic,

Thanks for the feedback. Freewing was one of the mfg I was curious about. Good to know sight is a good source. Impressive what you do. Heard you on one of the FT shows. Very interested in the A-10 model you did. Looking to look more into your sight and info when I find free time.

Thanks again for taking the time to respond.

Daniel
 

dortiz68

Junior Member
RAM,

What you say makes perfect sense. I was looking at a BlitzRCWorks F-22 based on forum posts which lead me to Banana Hobbies. Then I heard some not so positive reactions on the FT podcast. No slams, just more of a subtle comment that made me question and ultimately lead to this question.

Daniel
 

Jessem

Junior Member
I have good luck with my E-Flite p-51 and freewing f-22. The flyzone beaver and super cub are ok too. I only buy local or from motion rc.
 

hostaman

Junior Member
I only have Multiplex and Horizon Hobby planes at present but the quality of both is in the 9/10 range.
The quality of HK planes worries me (they're such low cost) but I know plenty who have flown them and say they're pretty good, but the instructions can be wrong (CofG etc.), so they often favor a more experienced flyer.
 

HawkMan

Senior Member
Thing is HK isn't a manufacturer. they own some which they sell products from. Like Durafly and Avios. both of which are supposedly excellent quality. Then they sell from known asian brands like volantexrc, though you often won't see them branded as such on the webpage, which are very good quality planes, but at least on the earlier models you want to make sure you have shrinkwrap or something on the clevises. though my new model came with tubing, though it was to tight for me to bother so I just used shrink wrap. And then they sell super cheap chinese stuff, which work bu you need to doublecheck stuff.
 

AkimboGlueGuns

Biplane Guy
Mentor
When it comes to 3D, nothing beats 3DHS. They are by far the snappiest I've seen (or flown, for that matter) and are very durable for balsa planes. Anything under the Extreme flight umbrella is bound to be a quality airframe and great flier.
 

ZoomNBoom

Senior Member
The quality of HK planes worries me (they're such low cost) but I know plenty who have flown them and say they're pretty good, but the instructions can be wrong (CofG etc.), so they often favor a more experienced flyer.

As someone else pointed out, HK doesnt make the planes, even the one's they brand themselves, like the durafly range which is (or rather, was) actually produced by FMS, hardly known for shoddy planes. HK are generally fantastic value for money, but they do sometimes skimp, in particular on the quality of the servo's. Not with all models, some come with decent servo's, some dont. Now you can get lucky with cheap/bad servo's (and unlucky with expensive ones) but it may sometimes be a good idea to replace the critical ones. But even then you end up with a very compelling price for what you get.

As for manual; somewhat of a mixed bag. On some models the manual is surprisingly exhaustive and quite excellent, on others its 2 sheets of A4 in chinglese, but even that is generally enough. Ive not encountered serious flaws with their noted cg

As for other brands; with multiplex you get their fabulous elapor foam, and the rest is usually top notch as well. You do pay for that however, and the difference isnt worth the price premium to me in most cases. YMMV. Similar things apply to FMS themselves, although the price is generally more reasonable and I cant say anything bad about the FMS planes I own (1400mm zero and fw190, and highspeed 950mm P47). But I only got them because hobbyking didnt carry something similar, otherwise, id probably have bought them there.