Never lost in ESCs myself, but I've only been bashing.

Hacker seems a bit overpriced and not competetive like castle.

thats not my experience

I am using Hyperion batteries great stuff for great prices!
I only hate China shit, so Taiwan, Japan, Korean etc are good stuff like real USA stuff. Also support/warranty/software etc are much better then HK shit.

Supporting clones in any way is condoning theft. Time, money, sweat, etc. are spent in engineering, trial and error, equipment, parts, etc. in the development of any innovative new part - of course a clone can be sold for less...they STOLE the engineering costs. This is no different than stealing a car in the big picture of things. Buying a clone ought to be punishable by law as an accessory to stealing IMO.

The problem with blatant copying like this is , while China does have copyright laws they aren't worth the paper they are written on. They fiercely protect their own and only way you will get any justice is to pay a bunch of corrupted government officials to actually exercise the laws that are in place. Other than that I doubt much can be done.

This is bad. Really bad IMO and if these copied ESCs perform well that could be even worse. If they drive Castle out of business who will innovate and develop new ESCs. The copycats sure wont and probably wouldn't know how to anyway. What makes me wonder is why no one is copying the Euro ESCs like MGM and Schulze???? Surely them being more expensive there would be even greater profit margin. Why are they almost always picking on Castle? Anyone have theory on this?

I hope you get some sort of positive outcome out of this Patrick.

People who are buying castle will always buy castle products. IMO this product looks identical just on outside. You can not tell what is inside and if it is copied.

Dejan

Too bad to see HobbyKing going down this path. Regardless of whether you loved or hated their lipos and other gear at least they were selling their own products. Now they have this Castle clone ESC, along with the Spektrum and Futaba clone RX's and the HPI Baja clones, with no doubt more things to come.

The sad part is there is very high demand for these products. As long as there is demand and people willing to buy it, they'll keep churning out the clones.

+1. this was the way i used to feel.....

however....
After seeing all of these new products.... i'll add that I will never... EVER buy from hobby king again. no batteries, nothing. they've lost my business for good. ugh.....this makes me wanna vomit.

Yea i've decided i'm done with hobby king too now....i'll run my current packs till their done and thats it...i can get roar approved packs from amain for only a slight amount more then packs with shipping from HK anyway

Thank you Mike!

na, they arent more expensive, example:

MGM 140 amp 15S esc : 259 eur = 340 usd
http://mgm-compro.com/index.php?tid=...-32-bit-system
Castle Monster XL 8S esc = 350 usd
http://www.castlecreations.com/products/mamba_xl.html

MGM is know as very reliable and spot on if not underrated spec

Why does everyone only pick on the Chinese companies? I think I was the only one to complain when Slovak coppied cc with their novalink that looks exactly like the castle link. So it's ok when an American company does it? Leave the lipos alone too. Show me where else I can get 4 2s and 2 6s and 2 4s for under $250. Same stuff as here. How is it any different when an American company buys overseas cells and puts their sticker on them for a huge profit?

Glad I posted this when I did... I think I opened up pandora's box with this one..


As for a blatant copy of a well respected product I do not support them. They look exactly like castle units, The internals like the FET boards look to be primitive in comparison to castle units that I have seen. But I just boggles my mind to think that if you go through your "research and development" of a product, Why the hell would you dress it as the competitors?

I have no problem buying batteries through hobbyking as they are not copied, derived or stolen from another company-as far as we know. but Never will I buy a wanna be castle esc.


I have way too much respect for castle creations.
THe only esc's I own are castle's

My castle collection:
5 castle links
2 working Mamba Monsters
1 Dead mamba monster
2 artur modded mamba max's
1 Castle BEC
1 Castle BEC pro
1 CC 2200
1 HPI CC 2650
Castle 32p Pinions

Too man 6.5mm bullet connectors to count

I support Castle :)

I highly doubt that the NovaLink is a clone or duplicate of Castle's. Novak, being an American company that has been in the r/c business, and business in general, for a long time isn't that stupid.

As for the batteries; buying cheap cells and slapping a label on them and then charging huge upcharge is just explotation no matter where the company is located. That being said, a lot of the non-"Chinese" batteries that were mentioned do more than just buy cells and slap a label on them.

Because in this case Hobby King is directly and blatantly stealing from Castle.