Air Rage BladeRunner II Indoor RC Helicopter Review
With "middle-age" fast approaching and 2 young children, it's not often that I get to buy a toy purely for myself. So when I saw that I could get a free Air Rage BladeRunner with my Air Miles reward points, I jumped at the chance. Not only would I get to try out a radio-controlled helicopter, something I've wanted since the age of 12, I could do it without my wife breathing down my neck about wasting money on silly things. She complained anyway. "But honey, it's a freakin' radio-controlled helicopter!", I said. Women just don't get it.
My experience ordering with Air Miles through their web site was unexpectedly pleasant. They said to expect delivery in about 3 weeks. Given that this was early December, I wasn't expecting it until well after Christmas. So when the delivery came less than a week later, I was shocked! I was also shocked that for a pretty small little indoor chopper, the box was surprisingly big. What I found was that it was well packed in form-fitting styrafoam, and it was a good thing too, as this whirlybird is quite delicate.
After the extraction, my next pleasant surprise was that the BladeRunner is ready to fly right out of the box. No lengthy first-time charge here, it comes pre-charged! All it needed was some AA's for the controller, and I was ready to crash this sucker! Uh, I mean fly... ready to fly...
Flying the BladeRunner is remarkably easy. I'm sure my hundreds of hours of flight time in video-game helicopters helped a lot. No, really. Ok, I will admit, it is incredibly stable, in fact so stable that a child could probably fly with only a few minutes practice. Don't tell my son though.
The BladeRunner uses what's called a coaxial rotor system, whereby two sets of propeller blades, one on top of the other, spinn in opposite directions. It's quite an old system, first built as a modification of a Chinese top in 1783 by the French naturalist Launoy, and later patented in France by the Vicomte Gustave Ponton d'Amecourt. Because of the configuration of the blades, it's naturally self-stabilizing, and needs no tail-rotor to keep from going into a death spiral. And it's impossible to flip this thing. In fact, it's impossible to do much with it, except go up and down, rotate left or right, and go forwards or backwards very very slowly. Pretty much the only way to crash is to go down too fast or to get too close to a piece of furniture or a wall. Even in a crash, because of the wire rings around the rotor blades, it's quite difficult to damage the helicopter. Don't even think about flying outside though. The slightest gust of wind, even from a slightly open window, is enough to send you careening off course.
Forward and backward motion is achieved through the use of an incredibly tiny motor and propeller on the tail. It provides just enough power to tilt the helicopter slightly, thereby causing forward or reverse motion. Turning is accomplished through a slight adjustment in the relative speeds of the counter-rotating blades. In fact the most difficult thing to learn when flying the BladeRunner is the fairly constant adjustment needed to the left/right fine tuning dial. And did I mention how slow it is? Forward and backward movement is quite literally at a snails pace. The instruction booklet recommends taping a small coin to the nose of the helicopter once you're used to flying. While that does speed up going forwards, it makes backwards impossible, and hovering quite difficult.
Flight time is fairly limited. To keep the helicopter weight down, there is a permanently built-in rechargeable battery, which lets you fly for 3 or 4 minutes at a time. The RC controller doubles as a charger, using a plug-in wire with a tiny connector that is a bit too small for my big fingers and an AC adapter.
Conclusion
While action-junkies may not find much to whet their appetites with the BladeRunner, flight afficiandoes who have been afraid of the high price of traditional RC choppers should have a great time. Unfortunately, because the flight-time is so short and the speed so slow, it's hard to do much other than one lap around the living room. The good news is, gadget-boys with wives or mothers that are quick to exclaim "You're not flying that in here" don't have to worry too much about breaking anything. This is truly an easy flyer.
6/5/2006 : permalink
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