Is there a difference between air and surface servos?

[nativepaul]

It looks like I have a different opinion or maybe just a different viewpoint to the rest of you, in general I would say, yes, there are differences in servos between the R/C disciplines. Cars need an unusual combination of high torque and high speed that requires good motors and ESCs inside them and that makes them expensive, but most air disciplines don't require as much speed (helicopter tails being a notable exception) most of my boats and planes have servos about .15-.22 second travel to maximise torque for the size and weight of the servo, and fly well with that even 3D funfliers, but my cars are around .1 second with as much or more torque but weigh and cost a lot more I usually spend as much for the one servo in a car as I do for all 4 servos in a plane. I love the Ace 1015s in my 1/8th cars, but if someone gave me a bunch free and paid me £10 each to fit them in my models I wouldn't fit any to my planes and only 1 of my boats would get one as they're too heavy and would just blunt performance with the servo speed being of no benefit, if I had any huge planes sure a few would go in there, but on my own dollar I'd buy something slower, lighter and cheaper, for the same torque.

All servos with a few exceptions operate on the same principals and you CAN run a car one in a plane (with a weight penalty), or run a plane one in a car (but you may find you need to get that opposite lock on quicker if your tail happy like me), those exceptions are; retract servos (very low geared for immense torque but very low speed and unusual 180degree rotation lock to lock rather than the normal 120), sail arm servos (low geared for massive torque to move and hold a full sail on the end of an arm several inches long but very low speed), sail winch servos (often regular speed and torque but instead of 120degrees of rotation they have continuous rotation to winch in a sail sheet)