If you’re considering buying a radio controlled model, there are many different types to choose from, but essentially you have three main choices. Plane, car or helicopter? Which one do you think suits you best?

Let’s look at the benefits and disadvantages with them.

RC Planes
Planes can be quite expensive, running into the hundreds of pounds. They’re difficult to handle (especially the landings) and you can’t switch off when you’re flying them, or you’ll have a nasty crash. Planes are more for experienced RC enthusiasts than newcomers.

RC Cars
These vary in price from under a tenner, to thousands of pounds (if you go for a professional nitro powered car). Crashing isn’t so much of a problem as the cheaper cars are quite resilient, and they’re fairly easy to control. If you spend less than £100 on a RC car you’ll get a decent one that won’t cost you much in maintenance.

RC Helicopters
Much like cars, they can vary from a few quid to hundreds of pounds. The cheaper ones are electric and can be flown by the youngest child with little or no prior experience. The more expensive ones are for experts, as much like the planes, crashes are easy and costly.

So which one is for you? It depends on how much experience you have and what you’re looking for.

As this is the season to give, to think of others less fortunate and to donate presents, it’s only fitting that a radio controlled club from the USA donated a bunch of toys to a local community health centre. Earlier this month, the radio controlled helicopter and plane flying club made the donation, twenty-five stuffed toy animals, to their local children’s health centre so that when children visit the centre their trip is a little more enjoyable,

Tri-Lakes R/C Flying Club wanted to do something special for the children in the area, and rather than donate some RC models, they thought soft toys were the way to go. The RC models club has donated toys to the health centre for the last four years running.

Mary Helen Jeruzal, the Chaplain of the health centre, stated:

The kids’ faces just light up when we give these.

It is amazing how a stuffed animal brings the child out in everybody. Being able to hand a child a stuffed animal helps calm them down and takes the scare off the ER visit.

It’s also a wonderful thing for the children to know there’s somebody, who doesn’t know them, who cares.

The RC model club has thirty-five members from across the area, and they get together regularly to fly RC helicopters and planes. Dave Medley, the president of the flying club, stated:

This is one of the many things we are proud to do for the community.

There aren’t too many toys that can actually be considered truly educational; toys that spark the interest of children and make them want to learn more about things work. Frivolous toys such as video games, action figures and trading cards aren’t particularly education, they won’t teach your children anything and they won’t further their development.

Toys used to be quite the opposite though. For example, Mechano would teach children about engineering, how to design things that worked and build them. Many engineers today started by using Mechano as children, as the toy ignited their interest in engineering.

Hornby is another toy that has the capacity to teach children, to educate them. To use a Hornby train set you need to piece the set together, build it meticulously and learn how to organise which trains move in which track in order to avoid each other.

Radio controlled cars, planes helicopters are also great toys for teaching children. They often come in kits, which require assembly (teaching building and engineering skills) and when they are finished they require great skill to pilot and drive effectively. Is it any wonder that F1 World Champion Lewis Hamilton started building and racing radio controlled cars?

It’s Christmas morning, and hopefully you’ve had a radio controlled helicopter this morning from Father Christmas? If so, you’re probably playing with it right now or at the very least waiting for it to charge up.

When you’re done flying it up and down, left and right, what’s left to do with the RC helicopter? Here are a few uses for a radio controlled helicopter.

Annoy your parents
You know you want to. Try launching the RC helicopter from the back of the living room and flying past your parents without any warning. The surprise will make them laugh (well, it’ll make you laugh at least, their reaction may be slightly different).

Chase your pets
Not in a vindictive way, but cats love to chase things that scoot along the floor, such as RC cars or wind up mice, so what will they make of a radio controlled helicopter? It’s worth finding out.

Photography
If you have a radio controlled helicopter that is capable of holding a camera, you can use it to take great aerial photos when you go outside. It’s the easiest and cheapest way to take photos that you’ll not be able to take any other way.

When you’re not working hard in the office you’re probably idling away your time on some Internet site, or gazing out of the window at the boss’ new car, wondering why you don’t have one.

However, rather than wasting time on the net or daydreaming, you could be playing with one of the best office stress release toys on the market; the radio controlled helicopter.

Now before you say ‘surely you can’t fly an RC helicopter in the office’ hold on, you can. RC helicopter aren’t the big, petrol powered, noisy, bulky things they once were. Thanks to the advancements in technology, RC helicopters are now much smaller, quieter, cheaper and easier to use than ever before.

They’re so small and so easy to use that you can easy launch one from your desk, do several laps of the office, and land it again without anyone noticing a thing.

What better way to spend your working day than flying a radio controlled helicopter around the office? Assuming you don’t actually want to be working of course!

Just make sure your boss doesn’t walk in as your radio controlled helicopter passes the door, it might be difficult to explain.