HAYA Chieftain Mk3- first impressions

[zooma]

My next job is to paint the metal drive gear sprocket and idler wheel, the road wheels, the main gun barrel and the front glacis plate (these are not painted on the Chieftain as it is delivered) before I start the weathering .

I need to find out what would be the best shades of paint to match the pre-painted Chieftain - preferably Tamiya NATO Green and NATO Black colours as they are the easiest to find locally, but I will check any other types that are easily available in the UK to air brush with as there could be a slight difference that would make one type match the pre-painted parts better than the others without having to mix paints to get the best shade match.

As long as the newly painted areas are close enough to each other (colour wise) I can probably blend the old and new paint finishes together so that when they are weathered it will not be possible to see the join!

[zooma]

My set of cheap plastic tracks arrived safely from HAYA yesterday and I started to add some red/brown to the appropriate areas (on the outside) to act as a base for a rust colour.

The exhaust pipes were also given the same treatment as I hope to achieve a rust finish on them that looks like what I have seen of full size Chieftain tanks.

Today I will apply the same treatment to the inside of the tracks and when the paint drys I can take a look at picking out the highlights etc.....before hiding most of it under the weathering!

[zooma]

I need to paint the front lower hull where the factory painting stops, and this area of the tank (being right on the front of the tank) will be the most visible if I cannot get a good paint match so I will do this first.

The other parts of the HAYA Chieftain that come unpainted (main gun barrel, road wheels, drive sprockets and idler wheels ) whilst they are still important to get painted in the correct colours, are not so directly visible as the front of the tank will always be.

NATO green and NATO Black are the correct colours for a Mk3 Chieftain so that is what I am going to use and hope that the factory applied colour is close enough to allow a nice blending between the factory paint and the airbrushed lower hull areas (that are delivered in unpainted green plastic.)

The factory supplied finish is quite good but if I can't blend the colours together properly then I will respray the tank completely - but I want to avoid this if possible.

[zooma]

Having owned the HAYA Cheiftain for some time now I have come to the conclusion that even though it is a nice model that I am pleased to own it represents really poor value for money when compared to its more recent siblings.
The HAYA Centurion comes with a much better HAYA (FlySky) radio and also has the correct engine sound to match the original tank.
It also has a rotating cupola with gun flash and smoke for £799.
By comparison the Cheiftain needs a lot of extra cash spending on it to buy a suitable Clark board to gain the correct engine sound and a HAYA (FlySky) transmitter to go with it.
I am advised that the next HAYA Chieftain model will be much better priced as it will come with the correct engine sound and a “proper” (HAYA) transmitter , but meanwhile the cost of upgrading just to get the correct engine sound and a decent transmitter makes this original Chieftain a comparatively expensive model.

[zooma]

A Clark board programmed with the correct engine sound for the Chieftain tank is already available from HAYA (!).

A new FlySky (HAYA) transmitter is also needed to work with it as far as I know, so this is quite an expensive purchase just to “make good” a model that comes with the wrong sound and a “toy” transmitter that does not do justice to the price tag.

[zooma]

I was hopeful that HAYA would offer an upgrade kit to include the proper engine sound board and HAYA transmitter so that owners of the current Chieftain could px the incorrect sound board and “toy” transmitter to gain the current much better level of HAYA product specifications at a realistic price...........

[tankme]

I was hopeful that HAYA would offer an upgrade kit to include the proper engine sound board and HAYA transmitter so that owners of the current Chieftain could px the incorrect sound board and “toy” transmitter to gain the current much better level of HAYA product specifications at a realistic price...........

It was Haya's first tank they ever produced. If you know anything about manufacturing molds for injection molding, they cost an average of $10,000 PER MOLD. A tank probably requires at least 10 molds. These molds have to withstand thousands of heating and cooling cycles as they are injected with plastic, cooled, emptied, closed, heated, and injected again. So I would say the bare minimum investment to build the Chieftain was $100,000 just for the final molds. There are running changes that need to be made to the molds as the development process happens and then there are the thousands of hours of CAD work behind it all. He isn't a HL with millions of dollars to play with. So when people point out the price of tank and it's short comings, it was a much better offering than the original HL tanks which have evolved over the years. Haya is still a very small producer of tanks. Very small producers don't get the discount prices that come along with large volume that HL enjoys, but even their success has developed over the last 20 years as their first tank was released in the 2002-2003 timeframe.

Heng Long produces tanks they think they can sell a lot of, not necessarily what the community wants. Haya is attempting to fill a void as a small manufacturer that literally started from just being a reseller of other people's products. They decided to reinvest the profits of his online business into expanding the tanks available rather than just pocketing the cash. I would say that the profit he makes on his tanks is probably very little as it takes a long time to pay off that initial investment. When you order a batch of tanks from the company producing your molds, you pay immediately or upon delivery even though you haven't shipped a single tank to a customer. The parts then had to be assembled by someone so you contract another company to assemble the tanks. Yet another company is involved to create the packaging and send it to the place manufacturing your tank.

Bottom line is, is the Chieftain the cheapest, best offering on the market? No, but it's a great addition to the hobby. Haya is to HL as Tesla is to GM. GM makes 1200 vehicles a day in a single plant (with like 12 plants) when Tesla was making 1200 vehicles in a month in it's early years.

[Herr Dr. Professor]

Here in the U.S., for nearly 50 years I have been collecting and for a 24 years have written monthly magazine articles about 1/16 farm toys, a "niche" hobby. From discussions with manufacturers over the years, I have learned that what tankme has written immediately above is and long has been true. Indeed, in addition to the cost, there are even more challenges to assuring accuracy and quality of manufacturing. I am always impressed by what other RCTW builders can do to improve AFVs and other vehicles, but I also know that the ones that come to us "bone stock" have improved greatly in just a few years.

[zooma]

I understand the situation regarding manufacturing costs and the need to amortise the initial outlay over the likely number of units sold (I worked as a development engineer for many years) and is why the next HAYA Chieftain will offer better value and (like the HAYA Centurion) will probably offer the correct engine sound with a decent (HAYA?) radio at a lower price - maybe more in line with the Centurion pricing ?
The HAYA Centurion also needed a similar (or greater?) investment in moulds etc, but having gained the experience with the Chieftain model, has allowed HAYA to offer much more for a lower price.
The latest new FV4005 model from HAYA follows the pricing of the Centurion and at £799 is another good value for money r/c tank in my opinion.
Being aware of all this unfortunately will not reduce the cost of adding a decent (HAYA) radio and the correct Chieftain engine sound to the one I already have, -especially as I want to spend more of my pension money on more HAYA tanks in the near future!
.....an upgrade “deal” to include the better HAYA radio with the correct engine sound for the current Chieftain would bring the model into line with the newer HAYA models and would be greatly appreciated now that this model has achieved its sales target by being more or less “sold-out”.

[tankme]

Haya is using Clark boards for the "proper sound". In that case, they are limited by how many Clark can produce and at what price they can sell them at for the same reason. Clark is also a pretty small manufacturer.