The Quick kit that is supposedly of lesser quality is the one made by the american company HHI or otherwise known as Quick Worldwide. They used to be affiliated in some way but they no longer are. The stories i have heard is that the Quick Worldwide (the one i have is a quick japan) is made in china and the materials and workmanship are of lesser quality. However i have never seen an HHI / Quick WW kit myself so i cant comment on it. All i can say is that there is nothing low quality on this kit in my opinion and the parts are very precision and of very high quality. There is also an expert version coming very soon with many improvements. I have been talking to Quick Japan about this and i quote:
"And I am sorry but we have only silver version now for version 2.
Soon ( about 2-3 months later ), we will have expert version
with 8mm shaft and 2mm frame, 5mm tail shaft, and 1pc motor
mount , 2 bearings swash plate, 3 bearings main grip etc."
So apparently they have discontinued the version of the kit i have now and currently the Silver V2 with improvement over the kit i have now is what is being sold at the moment and in 2-3 months there will be again a blue Expert version which will be a bit tougher still.
Even saying that, This version i have is no joke. Its very high quality and if you dont beleive it is 3D ready, please have a look at this Video of the same kit i have only in silver. Its really worth a watch.
http://217.160.255.122/heli/EP8-3.wmv
He is using a digital full size futaba 9254 on the tail with excellent results as you can see in the video. Other than that there is really nothing special that he has done. He is flying the stock machine with the stock CF blades it comes with and a mega 16/25/4 on either 6 cells or 8 cell lipo packs. Using a castle creations phoenix 35 amp ESC with it (although i used a kontroniks jazz 40). So it really isnt any more expensive to put together than a trex aside from the fact that you need twice the lipo for this heli than you need for the Trex. And this heli comes with full metal upgrades stock. You have to buy those for the trex extra. Also like i have done he cut up some raptor 50 landing gear (this is actually where i got the idea). I just think it looks better but thats just a matter of taste.
Im thinking about importing this heli. The price is very nice (around 270 euros per kit i think) and that comes with motor pinions and CF blades. Compare this to the TREX 450 SE kit which is more than 450 Euros for the full metal version. Of course they arent really the same size / class of heli but i think its a logical next step for someone wanting something a bit bigger than the TREX. And you can re-use the lipo packs you already have for your Trex in this heli. Either hook them up in parallel for a 3S2P pack (10-15 minutes flight time) or hook them in a series for 22.2 volts if you want lots of power (arounf 8-10 minutes flight time).
Motor Choices are:
hacker a30-10L for sport flying on 3-4 cells (about 80 euros) 18-20T pinion
Mega motors 16/25/4 on 6-8 cells for incredible 3D power (110 USD) 8-10T pinion
Anyway... Enough about that for now
[EDIT] I forgot to mention that i did put some Raptor 50 "greenies" 3D paddles on it to speed up cyclic response. I think they were 12 euros or something to buy them.
Cheers,
JD