Before you make any purchase in life you should ensure that you’re fully aware of all of the facts. You wouldn’t buy a car without checking out the average price, mileage, performance ratings and a thousand other statistics, and the same should be said for any purchase.

RC helicopters are no different. Don’t pick the first one you see without reading about it, researching it and seeing if it’s the best one for you. For example, do you want a petrol powered RC helicopter or a battery operated radio controlled helicopter? RC helicopters used to come in just the petrol powered variety, but recently cheaper, easier to use electric models have come to be, making them more accessible and easier to fly.

Electric helicopters are easy to use. They take little preparation and just require you to charge the battery before flight. This means anyone with little or no experience can use them.

Electric battery operated RC helicopters also allow you to fly them indoors, which was something you could never have done with the older, petrol powered models.

In addition to their flexibility, when you buy an electric RC helicopter it tends to come ready assembled, so you just need to charge up the battery and you’re away. Read up on them and make an informed choice, which is best for you?

With the UK in the grip of recession, and many people being laid off from their jobs, it’s often difficult to spare the money for a good hobby. Even the simple pleasures in life such as fishing can be very expensive as the rod and equipment can prove very costly.

Even simpler hobbies such as model railways can be very expensive, as the top end trains run into hundreds of pounds and you need to keep adding to your setup to keep your hobby fresh. Most hobbies in fact require a lot of money to fund, but there is one pastime that doesn’t cost that much, a pastime that once you’ve bought the initial kit you can happily keep participating in without any additional expense.

Playing with radio controlled models such as RC cars, RC helicopters and RC planes is much cheaper than it first seems. You can buy a decent RC car for around £150, and a decent RC helicopter for around the same price. In fact, if you didn’t want to spend that much money you could buy a car or helicopter for around £20. Once you’ve bought your model you can happily enjoy it without spending any extra money.

Many of us have wanted to be in a band at some stage of our lives, but often we fail due to a lack of time, funding or talent. However, for those of you still following your dream of being a rock star, pop star or whatever genre of music you’re into, you’re probably going to make a music video at some point.

Music videos used to be expensive and time consuming to make, but due to the advent of digital technology such as camcorders and editing software for your PC, music videos are much easier to make. Also, now that we have websites like YouTube and MySpace, music videos are easier to promote and to ensure that more people see your work and listen to your music.

However, just because music videos are easy to make and to distribute, they can be difficult to get those ‘money shots’. Large wind machines, sets, lights and helicopters don’t come cheap, even in this day and age. You can film those big sweeping tracking shots cheaply though, with the use of a radio controlled helicopter, equipped with a video camera. You can have tracking shots of your band as they beat out their latest track, shot from the air, cheaply and easily. RC helicopters with video cameras make this much easier, and accessible.

If you’ve ever been a child (and let’s face it, most of us have been) you’ll know the pleasures of chasing pigeons until they fly away, only for them to come back and get ready to be chased all over again. It’s one of the funniest things you can do as a toddler, and sometimes as an adult if you think you get away it.

Modern technology has found a way to do this without needing to run after pigeons though, with radio controlled models. For example, you could use a radio controlled car to speed up to the pigeons and send them scattering into the air, which is great fun because an RC car is much faster than your efforts to run towards them; you’ll catch some of them out for sure.

Of course, the problem is that the pigeons can fly, whereas your RC car cannot. This is where an RC helicopter comes into play! With a radio controlled helicopter you can send the birds flying, and then proceed to chase after them while they’re airborne. They won’t be expecting that for sure.

We reported a while ago about a new radio controlled helicopter that has been released, and comes equipped with a video camera; the Spycopter. The possibilities with a RC helicopter equipped with a video camera are endless, as any RC enthusiast and computer geek will be dying to get their hands on one.

Here are a few things you could do with a radio controlled helicopter that has a video camera, one which transmits the video signal live to a computer.

Spying
We had to start with this one. By using a RC helicopter equipped with a video camera you can watch what your neighbours are doing, what the people down the street are doing, and what anyone near you is up to. You can do all of this without any hassle, as your Spycopter will send the live signal to your computer or laptop.

Making cool movies
You can record the footage the Spycopter sees, making some fantastic videos for you to share via Facebook and YouTube. You can show footage of your house from unusual angles, you can have flybys of your street, your car and yourself; all uploaded to the Internet for everyone to see. How did you do that, they’ll ask?

Nature research
If you’re into nature you could use the video camera RC helicopter to have a look at birds’ nests and other such things that would be out of reach. You can fly it up to the tops of trees and look on cliff sides, recording what you see.

Sundays are lazy days, days for spending in bed, watching TV and generally doing nothing. They’re days for reading the newspaper, walking the dog and pottering around in the garden.

However not everyone likes to be quite so unproductive on a Sunday, and waste the day by doing less than nothing. Sundays are also the days for hobbies, like playing football, going swimming or doing something a little more unconventional.

Perhaps something along the lines of a radio controlled club? RC clubs exist all over the UK, and consist of different people with interests in radio controlled models. They play with RC cars, planes and radio controlled helicopters. Many of these groups meet on a Sunday and practice with their RC models in fields and other meeting places.

Sundays need not be the same again, with little or nothing happening. Now you can get yourself an RC model, whether it’s a car or a helicopter, and join an RC club to meet new friends, learn new skills and play with new toys.

Don’t waste your Sundays doing nothing, take to the skies with a radio controlled helicopter.

It may be the day for lovers, the day when couples spend time together being romantic, but it’s also a time that couples give gifts to each other. Women are easy to buy for on Valentine’s Day. You can go for the standard, tried and tested, gift of chocolates. Women always want chocolates, unless they’re on a diet of course.

You could also go for flowers. All women like to receive flowers, especially when they’re in work and the flowers are delivered in front of their colleagues, they love to make other women jealous!

Of course, if chocolates and flowers seem too little, you could go for the ultimate gift and try some jewellery. What woman doesn’t want to receive diamonds for Valentine’s Day?

Men however can be more difficult to buy for. They don’t like flowers, chocolates aren’t particularly of interest and jewellery isn’t really the right present. No, men love gadgets! Men like gadgets like watches, electrical items and radio controlled toys. It may not seem particularly loving, but rest assured you’ll impress a man more with an RC helicopter than you would with a scatter cushion shaped like a heart.

For radio controlled enthusiasts, anything powered by batteries and controlled by a remote transmitter enlists a feeling of excitement. It’s the thrill of controlling something that’s fast, exciting and distant that seems to generate excitement like no other toy. The question is though, is a radio controlled car better than a radio controlled helicopter?

It may not be the eternal question, but it’s one that people interested in getting into radio controlled models tend to ask. RC planes are difficult to control, expensive even at entry level and have a tendency to crash. RC boats are cheaper, but the lower end models are very slow and have a short range.

It’s cars and helicopters that dominate the RC model market, with RC cars always being accessible, and RC helicopters becoming more available due to changes in technology. As a result of the advent of electric RC helicopters, smaller, cheaper RC helicopters were introduced that were easy to control and great fun to fly.

The main different between RC helicopters and RC helicopters tends to be the areas where you can use them. RC cars require a flat surface, whereas RC helicopters can be used pretty much anywhere, meaning that RC helicopters are more universal in their appeal.