I have a young friend who would like to get into r/c electric's after seeing my Tiger Moth. Of course, he wants to know how much this is going to cost.

I know this airplane kit is around $50, plus upgrades as far as different wheels, some CF rod to beef up construction and some other building materials other than what comes with the kit. An of course, a couple of the now famous Qualcomm Li-ion batteries and a charger. I figure that is a little over a $100 for this combination of "stuff".

The majority of the remaining $$ is on the radio. I've advised to buy some thing beyond the minimum here in order to accomodate an expansion of his interest beyond the TM.

I paid about $90 for the servo's, reciever and ESC alone when I bought my model (I already had a Futaba TX) - I would think (hope) that I could advise my friend that he could obtain a 4 channel TX (using nicads) and the in-plane radio equipment for $150 or less.

Is there a radio system out there that anyone knows about which comes STOCK with the super,super small NARO or PICO servo's, and ESC and the small PICO receiver?
Any experience with this out there?

thanks

Your friend can get a complete kit for the TM at many hobby stores for about $200 (dreamhobbies.com, etc.). If they'd prefer to piece it together with upgraded gear, then figure about $130 for a nice 4-5 channel transmitter, about $100 for a flight pack, $50 for a plane and a powerplant of choice anywhere from about $20 to $50. It'll add up pretty quickly to $250 to $350 USD.

Of course if they've never flown. The 2 channel RFT AM models fly out of the box with spares for about $100. Not a bad way to start. The best thing to recommend is a large flying area with zero wind to start out and enough altitude to recover from those novice errors.

For someone just starting out the hitec focus 3fm is not a bad route if money is tight. Sure it is only a 3 channel but for a bit over $100 ($109 mail order) u get a nice 3 channel fm transmitter with nicads and a micro receiver with 2 micros servos. Your friend could use that gear in a tigermoth fine. It also has mixing capability so he could use it for a v-wing if he decides to get one later.

If money were not a big issue, the hitec flash 5x is a great radio. I have one myself and it works great. They run about $175 setup with the same micro receiver and servos.