In these times where residents complain about gangs of children hanging around on street corners, talk of ‘hoodies’ and how violent videos and video games affect behaviour, it might be worthwhile looking at a much better hobby for children to spend their time with.

Video games and films are fine, but they don’t benefit your child’s health, and some films and games have certain ‘moral’ ambiguities. A productive hobby, such as radio controlled models, teaches children about engineering, how to solve problems, building models and about hand-eye co-ordination when it comes to driving or flying them. Is it any wonder that current Formula One World Champion Lewis Hamilton began his interest in racing by building and racing radio controlled cars?

By introducing children to radio controlled cars, RC helicopters and planes you’re encouraging their development, helping them to learn valuable skills and to become responsible.

By encouraging your children to take an interest in RC helicopters and other radio controlled models you’re giving them the best start they could hope for, and possibly setting them for a career as a pilot, a racing driver or an engineer.

That’s much more productive than playing video games all day!

Insects have a the incredible ability of being to look in every direction at once, something that until now only schoolteachers have been able to recreate! Seriously though, scientists have just come up with a way to replicate the ability using artificial technology. They have created what has been described as an artificial eye.

The eye was created as an experiment and can be used to navigate robots, guide aircraft to fly and even act as security systems.

One of the scientists who created the eye, Dr Jochen Zeil, explains the artificial eye:

Panoramic vision means you have far more information with which to monitor and control your own movement in the world. Insects, in some ways, do this better than we do because they can see all round them at once.

Many sorts of wide-angle and panoramic devices have been designed before, but this one gives a wider field of view without obstruction, while being rugged and light-weight.

The new ‘eye’ will be tested by mounting it to a radio controlled helicopter, which suggests that in the future the eye could be used to pilot unmanned aircraft.

It’s one of the age old questions (at least among guys with little else to talk about). Would a helicopter beat a car in a race? Jeremy Clarkson attempted to prove that a car was more manoeuvrable than a helicopter when he raced his Lotus around the Top Gear track while being chased by an army helicopter, managing to avoid the gun lock from the helicopter by sharply turning the Lotus. However, would he have won had it been a straight drag race?

It’s not something that most of would be able to put to the test easily, but luckily, thanks to radio controlled toys, we can recreate the experiment fairly easily, and cheaply. Radio controlled cars can be bought for just a few pounds (going up to thousands for the Nitro powered cars) and radio controlled helicopters can be bought for similar amounts. You can recreate the Top Gear experiment at home (or at least in the garden or nearby field) by racing a radio controlled car against an RC helicopter to find out which would win.

Remember to try to make the race even though. Don’t go racing a small electric powered RC helicopter against a Nitro powered car. A level playing field makes for a much more interesting race!

Most little boys dream of becoming a helicopter pilot at some stage of their boyhood, whether that’s from watching old episodes of Airwolf or from playing with army toys. The idea of flying a helicopter, taking off and soaring through the skies is very exhilarating. However, most little boys grow up to do other things with their lives than become pilots flying helicopters, usually more boring things such as working in a bank or working as an accountant.

When you take jobs other than being a helicopter pilot you can still scratch that itch to fly a helicopter by piloting your very own RC helicopter. Radio controlled helicopters are very cheap compared with the prices they were ten years ago, and are very easy to control. You can pilot a radio controlled helicopter without spending years learning the technique and gaining your pilot’s license, and you don’t need countless hours of air time to fly unsupervised.

Plus, with a radio controlled helicopter you can even fly them indoors, so you don’t have to leave the comfort of your home to fulfil that childhood dream of becoming a helicopter pilot.

One of the most interesting things you can do as a hobby is to make movies. Not so long ago the act of making videos and films at home was very difficult as video cameras were extremely expensive, low quality and editing facilities were hard to come by. If you wanted to edit shots together you had to use a VCR and a pause button, or hire video editing facilities, which were even more expensive.

Then of course there were very few ways to get your films shown, unless they involved someone falling over!

Now of course making films at home is easy, because video cameras are much cheaper, editing facilities exist on computers and the quality is almost broadcast level. Distributing your videos is simple too thanks to websites like YouTube, so you can get thousands of people watching your work.

Better yet, with cheaper radio controlled helicopters, you can create some breathtaking video footage by attaching a lightweight digital video camera to the bottom of an RC helicopter and filming while in flight. This will get footage that you couldn’t get any other way, and footage that ten years ago was impossible for the home video enthusiast.

When RC toys first came into shops, RC helicopters were out of the reach of most people due to the cost. If you wanted a radio controlled toy you had to make do with an RC car, or possibly a radio controlled boat. RC planes cost several hundred pounds and RC helicopters were even more expensive.

Worse yet, flying an RC helicopter was extremely difficult and any accidents that you had could prove very costly to fix. These days RC helicopters are far more affordable and easy to use thanks to the advancements of technology. You can buy electrical powered RC helicopters very cheaply, in a variety of sizes. Better yet, they can be flown without any prior experience by anyone of any age, including young children.

The advancements in technology mean that those people who used to stare longingly at someone flying a radio controlled helicopter many years ago can now buy their own RC helicopter for very little, and fly their RC model like they always wanted to.

So if you thought that radio controlled helicopters were expensive, think again.

When it comes to choosing a radio controlled toy to begin your RC model experience, you have to decide whether a plane or a helicopter will suit you best. They’re both a lot of fun to fly, but they are controlled in very different ways and as a result require different skills to pilot.

Here are some ways that radio controlled helicopters differ from RC planes.

RC helicopters can be flown indoors. If you have one of the smaller electric RC helicopters you’re able to fly it inside your home or office. It’s small enough to safely take off from a table top and hover round the room. An RC plane cannot do that, as you have to fly them outside.

Flying electric RC helicopters is very easy. You don’t need any prior RC model experience and even a child can fly an RC helicopter without risk of damaging the toy. An RC plane is much more tricky to fly as it requires a runway and concentration throughout the flight in order to avoid crashing. Landing an RC plane is also very difficult when compared to landing an electric RC helicopter.

Bear in mind though that some of the more expensive RC helicopters are difficult to fly, and require experience, so you should start with a cheaper electric model if you don’t have any RC model experience.

2009 is with us, and it’s almost time to put the Christmas decorations away for another year and return to work, or school (depending on your age). The question is, did you get what you really wanted this Christmas? Did you get the radio controlled toy that you were after?

If the answer is no, there’s no time like the present to check out radio controlled cars, planes and helicopters. They’re very cheap toys and great fun to play with, plus they’re educational, which is more than can be said for video games.

For example, current Formula One World Champion Lewis Hamilton started his racing career with radio controlled cars, where he actually appeared on Blue Peter as a child demonstrating his love for RC toys. Playing with RC toys such as planes, cars and radio controlled helicopters promotes a distinct skill set that you don’t get with any other recreation. You need hand-eye coordination to control the models, you need engineering expertise to build the models and you need patience to maintain them.

Also, playing with RC models means you get to go outside, which most parents today are very keen for their children to do in order to help them stay fit and healthy.