RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Why have rc tanks lagged behind for so long , is it because no-one says the quality is so poor. The vast majority are sold as toys. You would think if people complained loudly we might have premium ones not just offered a paint job and some plastic changed to metal. If you are looking for 1/35 quality in 1/16 its going to cost and be prepared to chop out the rubbish and fix. Look at Tamiya, hatches moulded in , very little PE and they give you a KT turret with big slots to hang the spare tracks. The Panther is the same one mould with 3 tracks in one.

Well, it have to be balance between details and durability. My friend have Tamiya Tiger with 300+ EUR Aber PE set. And every RC meeting he is collecting falling parts from the ground

But my biggest issue with RC tanks "out of the box" are very fast gearboxes which cause tanks to run unrealistically fast.

Kaczor wrote: But my biggest issue with RC tanks "out of the box" are very fast gearboxes which cause tanks to run unrealistically fast.

Easy to fix if you are the manufacturer but they don't. Completely agree, frustrating isn't it. At least the latest HL models provide you with a control system that allows you to drive them slowly.

Slow things aren't exciting. Us "enthusiasts" are a very small portion of the market. They have very little detail and over sized detail for the masses. If every tank had small details they would all be broken creating unhappy customers and therefore low sales. Besides if the tanks were perfect out of the box companies wouldn't make any money from "upgrades".

If you enjoy fast, then the non-enthusiasts should have enough common sense to buy 1/10 race saloons and leave us to enjoy a bit of quality realism. It's not going to happen though, is it!

Where Heng Long are concerned, it's all about sales, keeping the bulk of their tanks at low prices makes them affordable for almost all.
Selling ten tanks to make the same profit as a single Tamiya is good business practice, because Heng Long must shift 50 to 100 tanks for every one Tamiya sold.
Which in turn takes away any incentive to spend money making noticeable changes in detail and accuracy.
Although they have started producing larger, more expensive tanks for the rich western connoisseur, and they are producing better gearboxes, knowing there is an extra market for those that enjoy tinkering and improving those cheap toys, so why bother improving the basic machine when they can shift thousands more just as toys.
Now saying that, Heng Long do do their pro version with metal upgrades, to feed us older children's happy childhoods

Yes they do METAL pro models but thats just the skin. Most of the running gear like bearings, suspension bars (tried the stronger version no improvement ), idler system etc is carried over from the plastic versions. They are trying to put all the small cottage industry after market makers out of business , we now have upgrade recoil , gearbox and boards ( sounds , servos, etc ) that are almost copies . Wonder what price the Pro versions will be with all of them fitted. Next up the accessories ?