Academic

SO, THE RADIO-CONTROLLED HELICOPTER CAME, and I have to say, it?s a steal for 29 bucks. It?s small,?

By Glenn Reynolds

SO, THE RADIO-CONTROLLED HELICOPTER CAME, and I have to say, it’s a steal for 29 bucks. It’s small, but jewel-like in construction and seems to be pretty rugged. It comes with spare rotors and tailrotor blade, though. The remote takes 6 AA batteries; the copter charges via a USB connection. 45 minutes or so is good for 6 or 7 minutes of flying. It’s pretty easy to control, though it takes a very light touch on the vertical control, while the forward-and-reverse — which is driven by a rotor at the back, not by tilting the main rotors — is a bit slow to respond by comparison. It was easy to get it to take off, hover, fly around the room, and land, though I overshot once and hit the ceiling fan (about 15-20 feet up in the living room) and that produced a tumble that nonetheless left it undamaged. Lots of fun for the price, though. It’s charging as I write this . . . .

UPDATE: Mike Flynn emails:

I received mine today (thanks for the link), and it is a blast. I was caught shorthanded on AA batteries, but I managed to scavenge enough from the Flip camera (from another Instapundit link-thanks again) and a spare TiVo remote to get it in the air.

You are right about the build quality of this thing. I can’t believe it was only 29 bucks. It seems pretty durable and looks really cool. It is a bit touchy on the vertical control, but after a few minutes and a couple of fairly spectacular crashes I had it flying pretty well.

Thanks again for the tip. Keep the great Amazon links coming! Oh, and all the other stuff, too.

I’ll try.

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on February 16, 2011 (boomark / email).