Boys, boys... The "make vs. buy" conversation goes on into perpetuity, and will never be solved. It's true in many fields. I've done both, and will continue to do so. I sometimes start with "make", then succumb to "buy", but sometimes I go the opposite way, too.
Guys....at no point in time did I ever say this was a bad product...I'm sure it's an excellent product. We are talking mere business practices here...at least that's what Bevan and I are talking about. Freefly wanting nothing to do with the tero after you have purchased it shows that they indeed have made zero modification to the actual machine other than mounting a camera plate and wire vibration dampening system. Someone show me how that justifies a $4,000.00 increase in the retail price with no customer support afterwords simply because you have attached your name to it. That's what this thread was started for, not because it is a bad product. Freefly made it look like they engineered the RC car from scratch, when they did not. That's what Bevan and I are talking about. It would be great if we could stop losing focus on the main issue here. Look http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2223169 even these guys know the deal. I don't know Bevan. All he did was a public service announcement. He holds people accountable for what they do and say. Thank you Bevan Goldswain for letting us know of this very important information $5k deep and no customer service is a bad business equation. Simple as that. Building one has nothing to do with, "if you have the time" by the way..you make the time. It's called being a master of your craft. Not just throwing cash at something you want until you have it, at least that's how I was taught.
I wanted to buy a tero when I saw the first videos on the web, but when I saw the price and knew that it was just a hpi baja 5B flux with a dampening plate, I just decided to make it by my own. The fact is that freefly sells a piece of carbon and wire rope dampers that you can make for 4000$ ... I bought an old baja for almost nothing and made two damper plates for less than 100$ and it works just fine On these tests the dampers are a bit soft yeah, by the way the result are totally usable. For this dslr plate I'll stiffen them a bit, just have to decrease the size of the cable length, easy to do. I'm making a second plate with stiffer dampers (One more millimiter of diameter on the cable) for big cams like red, sony fs serie, blackmagic cinema cams, and ursa mini. I made a two screws quick release so having two damper plates that can be switched easyly is a nice option to match perfectly with the kind of camera we will use on the Tarmac, instead of adding weight on it. So yeah to me the freefly tero is waaaaay to overpriced and the way they promote and sell it is really not honest...
Lycks welcome to the forums. Would you be kind enough to change your user name to your real first name and last name, please? The reasons for this (and how to do it) are explained here: http://forum.freeflysystems.com/index.php?threads/real-names.497/.
Hey guys, I have a HPI Baja which is stripped & I can get a Flowcine tranquilizer on there for dampening but the suspension is bottoming out with the shocks that came with it (movi pro + red dsmc2 + zeiss otus) can anyone point me in the right direction for a shock upgrade that will solve this problem? Am expecting it to take too much weight? Thanks