RC Helicopter

I've always wanted an RC helecopter. Ever since the day I first heard of one (I must have been like 12) I wanted one. The closest I came over my years was this awesome toy I used to have as a kid (can't remember the name) that had a helicopter attached to a control line and it would go in circles. You had two connected controls to handle rotor speed and pitch.. Was it called Whirly Bird? Man I loved that thing. I used to fly it in circles all day long, picking up the little guy that came with it and dropping it off..

Next was this game (again I can't remember the name) for the Apple I had where you would fly this chopper (side scrolling game) and pick up these people and rescue them then fly back to the base to drop them off.. Shit.. I wish I could remember the name of that game.. Played it for hours.

Anyway, I never bought a real RC chopper since they were so damn expensive and I was afraid I wouldn't be able to fly it. I hear they are incredibly hard to fly. I did watch this tv program one year where this guy was building a kit helecopter. That was amazing too.. Just seeing the kit showing up on a truck with all the parts and watching this guy build it and then fly in it.. too cool.. Of course this is a teme today, I can't remember the name.

So, I was in Radio Shack yesterday (hate the store, topic for another post.. or did I post a rant about them in the past?) and I saw for $60 an indoor RC helecopter. How cool is that? I didn't see it fly, it was just sitting there. I turned it on in hopes to fly it, but the remote had no batteries. Though I did get to play with it a little to see it's quality. It's tiny and light and looks well made. I decided to buy one after Christmas.

So I found it on the Radio Shack website today. From the user reviews it seems like it's cool, but not any fun to play with since it only has controls for the tail rotor and the rotor speed. There apparently is no control for rotor pitch so you can only go up/down and spin on axis. There is no forward or backwards control.

Now let me ask you this. Who the hell spends the time and energy to build a model RC chopper that doesn't go forward and backwards? It seems the users found that you could weight the front of the chopper to make it go forward but how much fun is that? It's totally out of control.

So, now it's back to the drawing board for me. I'm going to start looking around for a cheap RC chopper to buy and play with. Until then....


and played with it a while