US company still in business?

[SimonA]

Hi there

I’m based in the UK and relatively new to world of quadcopters and have been flying – like a few people have said they are doing in their posts in the ‘Introductions’ forum -- basic toy ones to gain some “experience”.

I have couple of build queries, but before heading over to the relevant forum to post these I was hoping that someone could let me know whether or not the USA company Ready to Fly Quads is still in business.

A few months back I sent a basic product query, via email to Paul Baxter – who is billed as the owner – who quickly responded. However, since then I have sent a follow-up message two or three times, before buying the parts, but haven’t received a response. I have even called twice and left a message via voicemail, but no luck.

There are a couple of things I would like to order from the company’s Web-site. I’m sure I could find them elsewhere, but I find the silence puzzling.

Anyone know what’s going on?

Thanks

 

[wafflejock]

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Well since I ordered a kk board from hobby king(December 30th) and it still isn't here, I've pretty much given up all hope on ever seeing it (I ordered it 3 weeks before I ordered a DX6i, and I have the radio in my hands already) So I was thinking of ordering from Ready To Fly Quads. Anyone...

forum.flitetest.com

I don't know anything about this business or owner but it seems just from some searching around that it's been and maybe still is a one man show. Given shortage of chips and whatnot in recent times I don't doubt that having some sort of consistent flow of products in and things going out has likely caused issues though... Mostly guessing this because saw a lot of similar small businesses pop up and disappear at times around my other big hobby (electric skateboards). For niche DIY hobbies there tends to be a lot of entrepreneurial attempts and people who can do better in terms of building a small quantity of things but have a hard time scaling up if you require skilled labor and don't figure out how to disseminate your skills or delegate work (I also ran my own semi-successful but ultimately failed business for a few years doing web development so have some first hand experience of the difficulties in doing this).

Anyhow TLDR if want to support the small business looks like might have to deal with some wait time. If want to just get some parts I buy a lot from racedayquads.com sometimes from getfpv.com and recently have been turned on to fpvexchange.com.

Also in terms of products I am a fan of these mfgs/products:
iFlight - Reasonable price and decent frames, ESCs and FCs, some good motors too now
EMAX - Good motors, fun micro quads
BQE https://bqe.io/ - More solid frames
Runcam - Split cams work well if not running a dedicated "action cam" like gopro
ExpressLRS (open hardware/open source software transmitter/receiver modules)

For goggles is very subjective but I do still like my Fatshark HDO for analog and DJI is good for digital though they are in and out with regard to supporting/participating in the acro/racing FPV world and are spread across all of quadcopter flying, but in general the digital goggles work well and interface with the FC fine.