When I was a child in New York City, I remember my fascination with sidewalk vendors who sold magical devices, crystals that would bloom underwater into fabulous alien shapes, wind-up tin toys that careened crazily across the concrete.

Sometimes my parents would indulge us, buying a tiny spring-powered dog or a tumbling acrobat or a monkey that climbed a string.

But when we got home, they lost their charm. They slowed down, they jammed, they didn’t work: they became normal, fallible and ordinary.

Twice last year I succumbed to the same sort of immediate enchantment, both times in AeroMicro, my favorite local radio-control goodies store.

The first spell was cast by the Vapor, a half-ounce wisp of an airplane designed for indoor flight.

Watching it take off from a countertop, circle the inside of the store and land back on the countertop, I wondered if a mere mortal could fly it as well as what I was seeing.

I suspected not. It would probably be like one of those yo-yo tricks — the throw-down, the sleeper, the three-leaf clover — that looked so cool but proved so impossible back in the day.

But technology delivers magic intact and reproducible.

The Vapor flies as well in my hands as it did that day in AeroMicro. It’s an amazingly capable little airplane with a 2.4GHz receiver that’s fully compatible with my Spektrum transmitter.

That receiver is built on a tiny circuit board that also includes two servos and a speed controller for the motor. A single-cell 70mAh LiPo battery powers the plane for about 15 minutes of flying time.

Even more amazing than the Vapor is the Blade MCX, a 1-ounce helicopter with a remarkably effective gyro that keeps it stable, even in the hands of a helicopter novice such as me.

The Blade MCX flies for about 6 minutes on its single-cell 110mAh LiPo battery.

I’ve owned a Blade MCX for more than a month, but hadn’t had a chance to fly it until Saturday, at the last of our indoor flying events at the MVP sports complex.

When Sadie, our elderly Great Dane, hears a small motor rev up — or a transmitter or battery charger beep — she believes that the world is about to end. She crawls under the dining room table, huddling miserably in the gloom until we coax her out.

So I don’t fly in or near the house. This is Sadie’s territory.

Saturday at the sports complex I snapped a battery into the Blade MCX and quickly set it down on a level surface so the gyro could calibrate itself.

I advanced the throttle and watched the micro helicopter rise in the air. Left stick — “throttle” and “rudder” to us airplane guys — controls altitude and heading. Right stick controls “elevator” and “aileron.”

It was surprisingly smooth, stable and responsive. I let it fly across the room, then turned it around and brought it back. Eventually, I landed it in my hand.

Astounding!

The people who developed these two technological marvels are already working on more sophisticated miniature flying machines, including a four-channel 3D acrobatic plane.

This is a wonderful time for radio control flying.

Tags: Airplanes, Flying, Helicopters, Indoors, Radio Control.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 4th, 2009 at 3:10 pm and is filed under Elsewhere. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.