The first time I ever saw a remote control helicopter – I wanted one. That would’ve been from the age of about 8, I think. The place was Hobby Town USA. The price was… well… let’s just say, an RC heli was not a viable hobby option for a few years. 
Fast forward 16 years. Technology, particularily in the field of rechargable batteries, has come along way – in quality and price. Where previously the startup cost of the hobby was (relying on very long past memories here) minimum $300 or so, now you can get started for around $120. Even less if you go the wallyworld route, but I don’t recommend it. 
ANYway, I may be mistaken about that price difference; what does an 8 year old know? I guess the important thing is - $120 is not a bad entry cost for the coolest hobby ever. How cool, you ask? A HECK of a lot more cool than fly fishing, I’ll tell you that. Much more cool than unicycling, marginally more cool than building robots, infinitely more cool than weaving baskets…
I could go on for awhile, but I think you’ve got the idea.
It’s cool.
And it’s cheap.
Moving on.
So what is so cool about RC Heli’s? Unlike cars, boats, and to a lesser extent, airplanes, Helicopters are more capable mechanically than humans are capable of mastering. That means, no matter how good you are, you will always be within a good model’s envelope. THAT means, no matter how good you are – there is something you don’t know how to do. Compare that to an RC car. Out of the box, you can do everything the model is capable of. Sure, you can fine tune performance – you can definately develope meaningful racing skills with practice – but that is all matter of “quantiy,” not matter of type. Sure, you can pull a more accurate s-curve, hugging the corners at 30mph, but a turn is a turn. Boats are about the same. Airplanes, of course, take things up a notch. Now you’ve got true 3D capability. Now you can do loops, dives, and all the fancy aerobatics. But you’re still limited to always moving forward. Ok, technically, I suppose you can stall an airplane and let it “fall” backwards for a moment – but falling is a very limited operation.
Helicopters take a massive leap forward. With a decent RC Heli, you have nearly arbitrary capability. You can be hovering in one spot, and instantaneously be moving any arbitrary 3D direction. You can sit in one spot, right side up… or upside down. Yes, RC Heli’s (unlike their “real life” counterparts, can hover upside down, indefinately). Like a Hummingbird OD’d on caffeine, a skilled RC Heli pilot can zip the model haphazardly though the air, yet always remain in ultra-precise control. They can bounce the model around in the air with more druken intensity than the little steel ball in the hands of a hyper pinball machine player. Observe:
 ….
[Ok, well, my dumb youtube link isn't working. So you'll have to not be lazy, and go look up "alan szabo" on youtube.]
Yet, as good as some can get – piloting a heli is the most non-intuitive thing I’ve ever attempted. There is no analogous, regularily occurring scenario in life. Cars, boats, planes – the controls all operate on the same principles. Some sort of steering “wheel”, some sort of acceleration/decelleration control, perhaps a reverse control, and in the case of an airplane, and extra “up/down” control. Once you know one, the rest come easily.
But not so with helicopters. With the arbitrary directional capability comes a very complex set of controls. There is no forward and reverse. There is no linear accelerate/decelerate, or braking. On one hand, you have the throttle controlling the speed of the main rotors. You have the “rudder,” controlling the speed of the tail rotor. You have the cyclic, controlling the relative life at any point along the main rotors 360 degrees of rotation. Every move the heli is capable of is a combination of these controls.
You want to go forward? Increase main rotor throttle, increase rudder rotation, and add forward cyclic. The forward cyclic will cause the main blades to add more lift behind the heli, tilting in forward. The force vector from the main rotor now has a horizontal element (instead of simply vertical, as in a flat hover), driving the heli forward. The increased throttle maintains the original vertical component of the force, maintaining the heli’s altitude, and the increased rudder counters the stronger torque from the throttled up main rotors to keep the heli facing the same direction.
I received my first RC Heli for Christmas of 2006. It was, of course, super cool. It was also, unfortunately, from wallyworld. The end result? It was super cool for about 6 minutes, then it broke. But wow, that 6 minutes – I mean, the thing actually flew. And I don’t mean it flew like an airplane does – where it’s either moving or it’s crashing – I mean, it sat there in mid-air, hovering, waiting for my command. Well, it SORT of sat there in mid-air. It wasn’t quite THAT simple. But for those brief moments when it actually cooperated…. suffice it to say, I was – am – addicted.
So we took that back from whence it came, and after a bit of shopping, bought a “real” model heli off a website. Turned out, that heli was also a lemon – but it taught me a lot. In trying to get the thing to work, I completely disassembled and reassembled the mechanics, read countless forum posts, practiced for hours on the simulator, etc. In the end, I was never really able to get it off the ground for any appreciable amount of time.
After a couple months of THAT nonsense, I was ready to cough up another $120. This time, though, I knew exactly what I was looking for – and settled on an Esky Honey Bee II. Not a very cool name, but a well known machine with a strong user-base.
Sure enough, straight out of the box, the HB was obviously “flyable.” I still couldn’t hover straight off, but it wasn’t long.
Now – another several months later – I am still as addicted as ever. I’m able to hold the model in a stable tail in hover, and it actually goes where I want it. But the key phrase there is “tail in” hover. See, as soon as you turn the heli nose in (facing you), everything reverses. In an RC car that’s not so bad. The steering does reverse when the car is coming toward you but the control is intuitive enough that you can intellectually compensate. Not so with a heli – the controls are so unnatural that learning to fly nose in, even if you’re good flying tail in, is almost like starting from scratch. It’s amazing really, how helpless I am when it’s facing me, compared to how well I have it under control when it’s not!
But again – that’s why it’s the coolest hobby ever. There’s always something new to learn.
So go buy one of these little “water testing” guys, and see for yourself.
