Importing to South Africa

[CraigSA]

Do you guys import your helis and parts or do you buy locally?

Which sites do you use for import if you do?

Thanks
Craig

[lotus7]

Both !
depends on what you want to buy

[nicolasmit]

Importing is a good option at the time with the R/$ exchange rate.

I've used www.readyheli.com and www.rchover.com with excellent pricing, shipping & service.
I purchase bulk items I need every so many months, you save lots on shipping, and takes about 10 days to arrive locally from US. To try and order only 1 or 2 parts at a time will not save you money because of shipping charge to SA. Normally in the region of $30 to $50 shipping per order via International Express Mail (10 days max to arrive in SA)

For fast shopping (if I cannot wait for spares to arive from US), best LHS by far (large stock holding) must be Arial Concepts in Midrand, JHB.

[Krusty Blade]

www.helidirect.com

About the only place I have managed to find to import stuff into Angola, and actually receive it.

[crash-alot]

Whow,


Arial Concepts must be one of the most impressive hobby shops I've seen!! You can be truly proud of it. Why shop overseas if you are a Align fanboy? They seems to have all bases covered! Maybe price?

Originally Posted by nicolasmit

Importing is a good option at the time with the R/$ exchange rate.

I've used www.readyheli.com and www.rchover.com with excellent pricing, shipping & service.
I purchase bulk items I need every so many months, you save lots on shipping, and takes about 10 days to arrive locally from US. To try and order only 1 or 2 parts at a time will not save you money because of shipping charge to SA. Normally in the region of $30 to $50 shipping per order via International Express Mail (10 days max to arrive in SA)

For fast shopping (if I cannot wait for spares to arive from US), best LHS by far (large stock holding) must be Arial Concepts in Midrand, JHB.

[CraigSA]

Price is really the only reason. I imported a blade 400 rtf for around R3500 including some spares. The best price I could find locally was R5500 - thats about a $220 difference!

[CraigSA]

I am about to use amainhobbies.com - they have very good shipping prices for orders over $100 and also some nice discount coupons.

[growler]

Aerial Concepts is very good...agreed. Only problem is they never have the stock you need.

They seem to only order stock every few months or so. And they ship sea freight for cost reasons. So when you go to get a particular part which they don't have, they tell you it's a 2 or 3 month wait Which as you can imagine is totally unacceptable.

Easier to just order from Readyheli....5 days at my door

[CraigSA]

My blade 400 came from Readyheli - also 5 days.

Pity the chinese haven't figured out the speedy shipping details yet!

I am really keen on getting one of these:

http://www.ehirobo.com/shop/product_...oducts_id=5578

[liaan]

Hi

you guys must pool up and ask the locals to import the things.. There few online shops that has dealer accounts at most of the above mentions shops.. If you need something, drop us email. either try www.rcgear.co.za or www.xheli.co.za. we both can get you almost anything.

Regards
RC Gear

[entropysbed]

Readyheli and Helidirect - both deliver no no time and of course lipos from hobbycity.

Aerial concepts is good, but +1 on what growler said - for instance they they sell the Trex 600 ESP and then dont carry all crash parts for it (they only recently got frames and still dont have A-arm links).

Otherwise their pricing on Align is v v good - on the rest of the stuff they are fairly expensive.

[GootyS]

Liaan you forgot www.rchelimad.co.za :-), we also bring in from other countries, i dont support the local shops unless i need to. We get from the US,UK and HK and shipping is not bad if a few people want items, the cost is shared among the people ordering.

[liaan]