BTW_ Here's a really cool RC helicopter video I shot and produced. It features this guy who is a 10 time national champion at flying areobatic (3d) helicopters.

I shot and produced several of those videos a few years ago, it's a lot of fun and we even have night flying capable helicopters, the blades are carbon fiber with LED's embedded in them and we add light rope down the tail boom and around the canopy and add some chemical cylume lights to the landing gear and fly at night, man what a rush that is!

So here's the link to the video, it's about 16mb, compressed down ALOT but still good, it's got glow fuel/Nitro machines (the ones with all the smoke) plus gassers that have no smoke (gassers) and even a gas turbine scale EC135 (if you're wondering, that red gas turbine helicopter cost around $20G).

HELI VIDEO TRAILER

I'm pretty sure this video has some video of all these helis.

ENJOY!

 

I always thought that stuff was so cool. When I was growing up one of the nieghboor kids dads was into the remote controlled planes. His dad had a shop with 4-5 in it. They all seemed so big. Back then he said he had to make them all himself from kits.
Closest I got to RC toys were my daughters RC cars.

 

They still have old school airplane kits available for the purist. It consists of a full size set of plans on paper. It's up to you to select the right woods (balsa and lite-plywood) and then cut out the templates and then cut your wood and get it all just so. After it's all glued together you need to cover it, not too many people use the silk paper with aero-dope to paint over it like they did back in the day.

Most use the more modern iron on (heat shrink) coverings which really revolutionized the art of building your own airplane.

Of course today a "kit" is considered to be a box of laser cut wood ready to assemble with super glue and epoxy. There are more complete kits called ARF's which are "Almost Ready to Fly" just add your radio gear and motor (gas or electric) and go fly.

Some are RTF "Ready to Fly" out the box, meaning everything is prebuilt and finished and basically you charge it and fly it.

Helicopter kits are typically a kit of nuts and bolts and helicopter parts, put it together per the instructions and use a lot of loctite and drop in your radio and engine and go fly.

There are a few smaller true RC helicopters that are pre-built out of the box and are ready to fly after charging all the batteries.

I started out on glow fuel systems, glow fuel is expensive especially when you get into the higher nitro percentage fuels. 30% nitro can sell for close to $30 a gallon and a hard flyer can burn two gallons a day. I moved to the bigger gas engines with a coil and sparkplug.

I don't run gasoline, I run Coleman camping fuel and mix it with AmSoil 2 stroke synthetic Sabre rated at 100/1 mixture, I actually run mine around 64/1.

Electric helicopters and airplanes have really gotten popular over the last 4-5 years with the advancement in battery technology. Small high power lithium Ion and Polymer battery technology spurred the jump to viable electric flight. Now I hear there is a new battery based on magnesium, supposed to be even stronger than LiPo but way more safe.

I've seen the high end electric motors for helicopters rated around 3-5 HP and are drawing around 80 amps. Incredible power for a small motor smaller than the diameter of a soda can.

The elite high end of helicopters and airplanes are true jet turbine engines. The little things fit in the palm of your hand and have ceramic bearings to support the 90K RPM speed of the turbines. They are simply amazing and they run off Jet Fuel or kerosene. Pricing has come down a lot for the turbine engines, they are down in the 3K $ range now.

The hobby of RC planes or helis is as bad an addiction as owning a Hummer and nearly as expensive. I remember back in 2002 I had a bad year flying my big glow helis. I had 5 crashes in about 4 months and each crash was in the $500-$700 range for repairs. It can get expensive.

 

I've always wanted a Heli... I just never commited to it... I've dropped thousands into my Xmods... and they aren't even anything special.

My F-150 drag truck and my 3 H2's are my favorites but I have others.

 

Hey Dooks....Guess what I got today?

My wife knows I wanted to get into this stuff, so for my B-day she bought me a remote-controlled Transformers Helicopter

I'm charging it now. Oh the irony

 

Thats great! Let us know how you like it.

 

This thing is a blast. The dogs just look at it like WTF is that? My wife and family try to catch the thing then get freaked it its going to take a finger off. They are more fun to mess with then the dogs I flew it above their heads a few times and you swear they are getting chased by a swarm of bees

The flight time is about 15 to 20 minutes depending on how you fly it. It's altitude and forward motion is controlled by the throttle. They give you this little rubber weights to add to the nose to make it go faster, but they also weigh it down a bit. All in all, it makes me feel like a little kid flying that thing around the house. I've crashed it about 30 times already and it still works fine. Good thing they sell the replacement rotors

 

Microsoft FSX, anyone??? I use it!