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bob forest
2008-01-22, 02:42 PM
Hi guys, well my stay in Chicago is coming to an end. Will be leaving tomorrow evening. Sunday I went to Al's Hobby Shop in Elmhurs, twenty five minutes from the center of Chicago. North America's second largest Hobby shop. They have 26 on staff. The display for radios is huge. I will post pics when I get back. It is a good thing we don't have a store like that here, we would be in the poor house. An interesting thing I saw, was pilots. Cactus makes a pilot for 30% planes and I forgot the name of the other brand, but the pilots are to me exactly the same. but the price was 12 dollars for one and the Cactus was 34 dollars. I could not figure out why. Well the one of the staff who was very helpfull mentioned that the Cactus are hand painted and the other one was made in china. Both the molds are made in china, but one was painted in the USA. hand painted. Like he said to me, could you tell the difference, I could not, and also like he said, at 1000 feet in the air who the hell cares. But some guys want the hand painted ones and it seems sells quiet a lot of them.
Walls of spinners, and wheels, just no end to the stock they have. Also manny pamphlets promoting local clubs, and the AMA, which you don't see here in the hobby shops. So the clubs support them. Many on staff are retired and also fly RC and work 2 to 3 days a week. Then another section just for rc cars, then another section just for rc boats, each section would be the size of about 20 feet by 20 feet. but the RC plane section is twice the size of Hobby ville. huge.
I bought a couple of pilots that's it. Now with the cdn dollar where it is, almost not worth buying there. But these pilots, nobody has them here.
The weather here is very cold, not much snow until today. 3 inches. but when I arrived last wed. no snow what soever. Chicago is a beautiful city. I went to the Aquarium, and to give you an idea of the size, one pool has 7 beluga whales. The dolphin show was incredible, and you can watch it from above and also below the pool. Really neat to see from below as you see the dolhins come in from their dive and go to the bottom to get speed to pop out again.
Hope the weekend is good for flying. getting antsy to fly.

bob forest
2008-01-24, 04:11 PM
As promised here are a few pics. You can see that you have a great choice of Radios. Also my grand daughter in front of some of the kits. They also have the slot car track in the basement.

Dwight Macdonald
2008-01-24, 10:30 PM
Next time I'm in Chicago, I'll be sure not to stop there ... too dangerous for my budget!

Eric Marchand
2008-01-25, 01:20 AM
Heck, I'd be liable to move in !!!