The new Great Planes Rifle 1M EP Sport ARF reaches speeds of 130+ with a “speed” power system, and 90+ mph with a “sport” power system. If you are looking for the thrill of sheer speed the Rifle 1M should impress you.

The Rifle comes as an ARF, meaning you’ll need to supply a radio system, a motor, speed controller, a battery and a charger. Otherwise the Rifle 1M takes very little in the way of final assembly, meaning you’ll be flying in a jiffy.

The 1M designation is for its wingspan, 1 meter, making it a fairly large size that is both easy to see and control at lunatic speeds. The part number is #GPMA1806, the street price is $160, and it should start hitting shelves in mid May. Click on THIS LINK for more information.

Interested in more Great Planes news? Check out THIS LINK.

We were the first to break the news a few weeks ago on our Google Plus show, Cubby then talked a little about all the details we had. Then again when all the other websites were claiming HPI was bought, we assured people that it wasn’t the case. HPI has now confirmed what we have been saying all along since we broke the news.

Here is the official announcement from HPI Racing about their exclusive distribution deal with Hobbico/Great Planes.

“In light of recent media speculation, HPI would like to confirm that it has appointed Hobbico/Great Planes Model Distributors as their exclusive distributor for HPI RC Cars in North America. This distribution partnership is a further extension of the HPI’s exclusive distribution network that is operating very successfully throughout the rest of the world.

HPI’s dedication to product development, marketing collaborations and our distribution partners will ensure HPI will remain the front runner in the worldwide RC market.”

So there you have it folks, expect big from HPI and Great Planes in the years to come. For more information on all of HPI’s fine products HERE is the link to their official website.

Another week has flown by and is in the books, why not give your luck a try on a TGIF Mystery Link?

On to rc…

First up a couple of reminders. This coming Saturday, February 9th, the BigSquidRC Bash Crew will be doing special coverage of the world’s largest indoor flying event, eFest, from Champaign Illinois. Expect news posts and a live video feed (as much as the net will allow) from the event floor. If you can’t join us in person keep an eye on our front page to see exactly what we come up with.

Last week we posted three reviews- the Axial Jeep Wrangler, iMaxRC X200 charger, and Radiant Reaktor brushless system. This week we’ll be posting reviews on Pro-Line Pro-2 performance upgrades, TrakPower DPS power supply and VR-1 dual charger, Atomik 8th scale Deegan SCT, and the electric Thunder Tiger Mini Cooper. Yes, another huge week for reviews here on BigSquidRC. Btw, shoot us an email on how you are liking our new A/B/C/D grading system, we’d like to know if you like it better than our old 1-10 system.

Also… try and catch our Wednesday night Google+ LIVE show. This week we just might be breaking more big news (like we did last week, more on that later), and we will once again be inviting you, yes you, to join us live in the Google+ Hangout live video feed. To be able to join in with us, you’ll need to have a G+ account plus a webcam and mic already set-up. More details on Wednesday…

Also in rc news…

The Nuremberg Toy Fair was huge last week, so huge it put a serious hurt’n on us media outlets. It’s pretty rare when we simply can’t keep up with all the new products being introduced. In fact, I think last week was the first time ever. Congrats to the big German show, and congrats to the industry for its continued growth.

What was the biggest news from the Toy Fair? You’d have to have been living on Mars to have not heard about Vaterra yet. Horizon has been teasing about an all new brand for months now and they did the official unveiling at Nuremberg. It was a nicely done introduction- a big reveal at the Toy Fair, the Vaterra dot com and FB page went live with perfect timing, and they even sent out some pretty sweet press kits to the media.

It’s quite obvious someone over at Horizon has been eating/breathing/shit’n Vaterra for the last 6 months. For example- the unveil was amazing, all the pics of the new vehicles were incredibly well done, all the videos were amazing, and all the products look to be solid inside and out. I have the feeling a bunch of midnight oil got burnt by the Horizon crew the last few months, but it turned out awesome and hopefully those guys are finally able to get some much needed sleep.

The actual Vaterra product looks incredible, to the point of being legit shelf queens that you can actually drive. As a hobby grade rc’er it was burnt in my brain from the start that you can either have a high performance hobby grade rc, or you can have an incredibly detailed scale looking body, but you can’t have both. Vaterra is the first entire line (off and on-road) in our industry that shows that yes you can, you can have your performance cake and incredible scale looking icing too.

Horizon already had two solid line-ups, the legendary Losi line, and the upstart ECX line of surface vehicles. Was there a need for a third? Some industry types will say definitely, the third brand name helps put even more Horizon product on LHS shelves to help push other brands off. Then other industry types know how long (and how much money) it takes to get a new brand off the ground. Certainly it takes years for a new brand to earn its keep on LHS shelves, and certainly it takes millions of marketing dollars to firmly plant the name into consumers heads.

Vaterra is certainly off to a stellar start. Everything they’ve done thus far has been top notch, certainly a testament to the rc passion of the staff over at Horizon. 2012 was very quiet for them, but thus far Horizon owns 2013. Now it’s a matter of waiting to test the actual product. Does the performance and reliability of the new Vaterra gear stack up to all the marketing hype and incredible scale looks? We’ll find out soon enough, and should the actual platforms be rock solid, Vaterra has a long prosperous future in rc. In fact, the Vaterra line might go down as a real game changer, the line that proved that us rc’ers can finally have machines that look as good as they perform.

On a different note…

We broke some pretty big news on our Wednesday night Google+ LIVE show last week. We broke the news that HPI will soon be exclusively distributed by Hobbico/Great Planes. In the past HPI was distributed by Great Planes, HRP and Horizon, starting later this year they will only be available from GP. No doubt Great Planes is the premier distributor of rc products in the entire world, they’ve got their act together, and they should be able to take HPI to new heights. Rumors have been floating around for years about the financial status of HPI, hopefully exclusive distribution by GP will fix any ills that might be going on over there. Look for the official announcement to be made March 1st.

Speaking of HPI, they once again had their Octane gas engines on display at Nuremberg. If there is one thing that can put HPI on top of the heap it would be their Octane powered vehicles taking over the market. If the Octane works as advertised, HPI is staring directly at a sales floor success like they’ve never seen before. Unfortunately, and I know first hand, that there is at least one other “big” name that is getting close to announcing their own gas power-plant for smaller scales. I hope HPI’s decision to announce their gas platform well over a year before it could hit shelves does not come back to haunt them.

That’s it for this week ya bunch of rc fanatics. Thanks for reading, and support your local hobby shops and bash spots when ya can.

YOUR Cub Reporter

Have you read our STRC Axial EXO hop-up review? If not, check it out HERE.

Have you read our review of the Duratrax Brushless Evader? Check it out HERE.

Unfortunately, Hobbico didn’t have any beans to spill to us as far as new or upcoming products, but they still have a very large presence at RCX, showing off a ton of their relatively new products like the DuraTrax VW Baja Bug (which we recently reviewed), and all of their recently acquired Team Durango products.  Check out some more pics in the gallery below.

Make sure you head over to Team Durango page for vehicles or details.

Great Planes is bringing back their America’s Best R/C Sale for 2011.  Last year’s sale saw a ton of great deals on products all across the R/C spectrum, and this year is sure to be no different.  Great Planes is promising savings of up to $50 on more than 100 products from their various brands, which includes DuraTrax, Tactic, Futaba, AquaCraft, and more.  But that’s not all, if you pick up RealFlight G5.5 during the sale, you’ll get a $20 gift certificate for free stuff.  Just like last year, the Best R/C Sale will be taking place through participating hobby shops all over the US.  The sale starts on April 20th and will run until June 30th, so you’ll have just over two months to get as many deals as you can take.

Keep an eye on the Best R/C website for more info.

This is something cool at IHobby from Thunder Tiger, being distributed by the fine folks at Great Planes.  I totally forgot to write down the info on this thing, but some of the stuff I can recall from the images is that it’s a relatively small, slight larger than a 1/18 scale car or truck.  It’s also going to  be a full RTR with a brushless system installed.

I can’t recall what the release date or price point of this thing, if I remember I’ll stop by the booth and get the info then update this post.