Most of us, especially pre-Millennials - in the aeromodeling hobby are accustomed
to frequenting a handful of traditional distributors for flight hardware -
Tower Hobbies,
Hobby Lobby (out of business), Brodak,
Sig,
Hobby
People, Horizon Hobby, etc. Except
for lines of proprietary kits, motors, and equipment, most offer the same assortment
of goods. That's fine if you are building and/or flying standard models with standard
parts. If, however, you are one of the precious few modelers these days who builds
and operates unique models with special needs, as with scale, research, or ad hoc
experimentation, then you may be frustrated with the normal suppliers.
Fortunately for you, there is a whole separate world of people who need and use
components similar to ours, but with different form factors, sizes, and specifications
- the robot crowd. The next time you are looking for a custom gear set for a set
of retractable landing gear, gun turret rotator, bomb dropping mechanism, or canopy
opener/closer, search for robot component distributors. A couple particularly popular
sources are Servo City and
Robot Shop. As the names imply, they have
huge stocks of gear boxes, servos, stepper motors, controllers, bearings, shafts,
batteries, wheels, axels, switches, collars, lights, speakers, RC gear, sensors,
range finders, microphones, wire, connectors, and host of other neat-o things that
will cause you to ask how you could have missed such a cornucopia of modeling wonders
before. There are of course many other sources that a Google search will turn up.
There is always Amazon if you want the
best prices and free shipping.
Posted July 25, 2015
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