There are many different things a father can do with his children to bond with them, such as playing football or taking trips to the park. However, not all children like football (perish the thought) so fathers have to find another thing they can play with. One of the best ways of grabbing your kid’s attention and inspiring them is to introduce them to the world of radio controlled models.

When children realise that they control a vehicle, a toy, remotely via a radio transmitter they fall in love with the concept. The thrill of controlling a vehicle with a remote control is one that never dies down, and you don’t just have to stick to the road with a car.

Because of the advent of electronic helicopters, RC helicopters are easy to control and cheap to buy, so even children can pick them up easily and safely, and you won’t be frightened of them crashing them into the floor and destroying them.

If you’re looking for something you can do with your kids that doesn’t involve kicking a ball around the park, you’ll find that radio controlled helicopters are perfect.

Following the post yesterday about the new Spycopter, that comes complete with its own video camera attached to the underside of the helicopter, and a USB connectable receiver to receive pictures from the helicopter direct to your PC, what would you use a radio controlled helicopter for?

Obviously, being a small camera with a ten minute fly time, and being attached to a RC helicopter, the picture isn’t going to be as good as the latest Sony HD video camera, so you couldn’t use it for making broadcast quality videos. However, there are a few things you could do with it.

If you’re a skater, imagine the cool videos you could make and upload to YouTube if you have video footage of your skating skills taken from the air, with a radio controlled helicopter!

If you’re in an RC club, you could use the Spycopter to film a radio controlled car race, much like F1 uses helicopters for footage.

Obviously there’s also the ‘spy’ aspect to the Spycopter as well, but be advised that most neighbours won’t like a radio controlled helicopter equipped with a camera flying over their garden.

These are just a few uses, there of course many more. What would you use a Spycopter for?

Flying radio controlled helicopters is a lot of fun, but imagine flying a radio controlled helicopter that has a video camera attached to it. This isn’t the stuff of dreams, or the makeshift creation of a technical wizkid in a shed, it’s the Spycopter.

The Spycopter is a radio controlled helicopter that comes equipped with a video camera that allows you to record what the helicopter sees. Better yet, the RC helicopter comes equipped with a receiver that connects to your PC or laptop via USB, allowing you to see the output of the video camera in real time. This means that by using your computer you can fly the radio controlled helicopter without even looking at the RC helicopter itself, you can control it solely by viewing the camera’s view on your computer.

The Spycopter has a range of 750 metres and last for up to ten minutes before you need to force a landing and recharge. The best thing about the Spycopter is that it’s a dual rotor RC helicopter, which means you get a very stable flight, and as such a very stable recording from the camera.

Many people think that radio controlled toys such as cars and helicopters are toys for children. However, RC models such as this are not the exclusive domain of the kids. RC helicopters and other such radio controlled toys can be played with by adults as well, and in fact, most radio controlled helicopters are played with by adults.

With the creation of new, mini electric RC helicopters, many adults are buying them and using them in work to while the hours away when the boss isn’t looking. In fact, a radio controlled helicopter is the perfect office toy. The mini RC helicopters are small enough to be hidden in the desk drawer, so that they can’t be spotted when prying eyes are around, and they’re small enough to launch from your desk, or even the top of your computer monitor.

The mini RC helicopter is also very quiet, meaning that you can do several laps of the office without disturbing people while they’re on the phone.

Office gadgets and toys are very popular, as stress in the office is important to combat, and the radio controlled helicopter (and other RC toys) is a great way to keep stress levels down and fun levels up.

If you’ve ever found yourself bed ridden through illness, or recuperating from an operation and are unable to get out as much as you’d like for a while, you’ll know how frustrating it can be seeing other people enjoying a healthy day. You’ll also know how bored you can become, watching others run around while you have to sit and watch, wishing you could join in.

If this sounds familiar, you should consider an activity that doesn’t require you to move around quite so much, such as radio controlled models. By controlling RC cars, RC helicopters or planes you don’t need to get up and run around, and you can have great exhilarating fun controlling them from a distance.

In effect, the RC models are doing the running around for you, while you enjoy them. It’s not substitute for being able to get up yourself, but with RC models you can begin to enjoy the freedom of moving around quickly without the pain involved.

The joy of the open road or the clear skies can be yours when you take control of a radio controlled car or an RC helicopter, and you don’t need to run around after it.

Radio controlled helicopters are a lot of fun, everybody who’s ever flown one will testify to that. However you might not realise that rather than just being for entertainment, RC helicopters also hold an important role in the retail sector, one that became ever more important in the run up to Christmas with the financial crisis affecting the UK.

RC helicopters were used by many stores, including some of large named stores, to attract potential customers. Large shopping centres in the UK were packed with customers in the run up to Christmas, but of course people were being much more frugal with their money, deciding carefully over their purchases. To help attract customers to their stores, and thus to their products, many stores would place items such as radio controlled helicopters in their entrance ways. Also, rather than just have them sat there, they would have store staff demonstrating the RC helicopters so that customers knew how easy they were to fly and how quiet they were.

RC helicopters were perfect for this because they could be flown safely over people’s heads, outside the store, ensuring that they were seen by people as they approached. Children in particular could see the radio controlled helicopters flying around and wanted to see what was in the shop.

It’s the age old question, what is better; a car or a helicopter? Jeremy Clarkson posed in on Top Gear once where the Lotus managed to outmanoeuvre the army helicopter, but was defeated by the helicopter as soon as it moved to a distance and achieved missile lock.

Top Gear’s tests are always stacked in favour of the car though, so which one would you prefer, in a radio controlled sense?

The radio controlled car is a lot of fun. It can achieve scale speeds of over 200 mph (as proven by a recent edition of the Gadget Show) and you can race them with fellow RC enthusiasts. They can be driven off road and on road, and they’re fairly cheap to buy and maintain, so long as you don’t opt for the really fast ones of course.

RC helicopters are very similar in that they start are very cheap prices (less than £30 for the smaller models) and can go to a lot higher for the larger, faster variety. They’re not so easy to race with other RC helicopter flyers though, as racing isn’t really what they’re for. That’s not to say you can’t compete with your friends with an RC helicopter, the competition comes in the skill with the controller, and performing the tricks that only an experienced RC pilot can do.

So, which do you prefer, the car or the helicopter

For those of use aged thirty or over, the nineteen eighties represents a decade fondly remembered for its fashion, cool cars and quality television. TV shows such as Knight Rider gave us the ultra cool Pontiac Trans Am known as KITT, the A-Team gave us BA’s van (which no fool should touch) and Airwolf showed the world how a prototype helicopter could defeat any aircraft it came up against.

Airwolf also featured the latest computer technology, and like its land based counterpart KITT, was capable of hacking into computers and jamming electrical equipment to catch the bad guys.

Airwolf was a story about a deadly black helicopter that was capable of 345 mph with the use of its ‘turbo boost’ functionality and was armed to the teeth, allowing it to destroy countless planes and rival helicopters every week, all on a Saturday afternoon and with nobody getting hurt.

Airwolf was a legend, and a legend that a great many RC helicopter enthusiasts have recreated using model kits and imagination. There are many websites on the Internet featuring pictures and stories of how radio control helicopter fans have recreated the invincible Airwolf to play with in their own garden, presumably without the lethal rock firing technology!