My patience has finally paid off.

Or so I thought.

The replacement ESC for my Rotor Concept HPQ1, aka LotusRC T380 quadcopter arrived after a three-week trip from China.

It arrived in a lightly padded paper envelope and a bit of bubble wrap.

Would you be surprised to learn that the dangblasted thing doesn't work?

It initializes, but it sends no signals back to the control board. So, the quad just sits there, mocking me in its silence.

I now have to ship the board back to China. The company has been very cooperative and I will likely get a refund on my shipping charge.

Xheli.com out of Los Angeles just started carrying that quad, but they've told me that no spare parts are available just yet since they only recently started carrying it.

If they do, that will mean a decent domestic source for parts.

In the meantime, I'll be pulling that board and sending it back to where it came from.

Oh, well. I have other things to fly, but man, is that quad fun when it works.