My compadre in crime recently purchased a twin motored, low cost RC plane from hobbytron.com (this time it was a real purchase and not a giveaway, FYI for true believers).

It’s the one shown here. We test em’ for you!

I mention this because, well RC vehicles have come a long way,,, and they still have a way to go.

For 41.97$ USD, you get a polypropylene body, motors, controllers and the like. However, these low cost RC units are so low cost that the control mechanisms utilized on them tend to make them so difficult to control that playing with them is harder than starting out a new game on Hero mode.

The Picoo Z helicopter or whatever the proper name for it is now, seemed the closest to achieving control and low cost, but it was still fraught with difficulties for play. Additionally, my apologies to the guys at Silverlit who really did it right and now have litigation fights all day to clean their good name, because of a bunch of scammers knocking them off.

In terms of flight characteristics for this plane,,,, well Sybill.

Yes the famous lady of multiple personalities is an apt description. For flight you toss the plane into the wind as you give it a good punch of throttle. As the controller is a simple two stick unit, the left (and already centered stick) only has the half length forward throw to control throttle forward. For side to side control the right stick on the controller simply adds more power to one side and less to another so that the motors make the turn for you. Because of this, I can make this direct advisement, you need a huge space to play with this. We were at a small park that had twin tennis courts to the side. There was almost a clear acre of grass we stood on next to the tennis courts. With this much room, on only one attempt a clean left handed turn was made, then, by sheer luck we re-attained enough speed and altitude to begin a second turn left, and even more luckily we got high enough to make it over the 18 foot tall chain link fence that held in the tennis courts where we ended up landing. With a large enough space this could easily become a much more interesting toy.

The batteries hold charge well, even a partial first charge lasted quite a while, (more than 10 minutes). The landing gear is well suited to asphalt and concrete, however, grass is NOT a good landing field for this plane. Soon after the first few flights we pulled off the front wheels as we got bored of replacing them after each flight on grass (however it lands very well on tarmac as mentioned).

In summation, if you’ve got at least 2 acres of concrete or asphalt with no obstructions, and a wind free day you are in for many consecutive minutes of difficult to control fun (and it really is fun if you have that). Otherwise, you’ll be in for a lot of runs after a recently crashed (but survivable)