Don't buy discontinued R/C helicopters

I have been building and flying model helicopters for over 15 years andalmost every month I come across a new commer to the hobby who haspurchased a helicopter from EBAY that simply is no longer fit forpurpose. If like me you are experienced and know what you are buyingthen so be it. For the others please read on.NOTE THIS IS AIMED 100% at the NEWBIE to this challenging yet rewarding hobby.For new commers whoenter the hobby with the "gee I have always wanted to do that" beware.Before buying please..please...please, contact a number of model shops and find out about current models and spares availability. Ican guarantee with 300% certainty that you are going to crash your helia number of times before you master the art. Crashes are costly at thebest of times but if your model is no longer in production you can kissthe money you paid for it goodbye because all you will be left with isa pile of rubbish.Occasionally you may well find a suitable donor machine for sale but you will be amongst the other 100 or so people also looking for spares and the one with the most cash is going to get them. Then you are faced with the prospect of negative returns, the longer this continues the greater the overall cost of the machine over the period you own it. At some point the smart ones are going to give up and move to something more readily available so whilst you may convince yourself that you will always get your money back by selling it for spares the fact is depending on how long you hang onto it you may not. Also consider that if the same critical part breaks on all machines then everyone is going to be buying that one part. Eventually that part even second hand will run out. At this point you won't be able to sell the remainder of your machine as the remaining parts will be irelevant and totally useless without that one critical component.The Kyosho Nexus and Concepts are two models to be especially wary of. These have been out of production for some time and critical items such as the main gear and clutch are no longer available. Stripping a main gear on a Nexus is very easy with just one hard tail landing. If you are a beginner I can assure you that you will do this and then be left with something you can no longer fly. These main gears sell for anything between

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