Just a week ago or so I had filled up my Amazon credit card enough times over again to get my $25 Amazon gift certificate, but couldn’t really come up with anything to spend it on. $25 is a good portion of a hardcover book, a handful of paperbacks, a down payment on a new board game, or any number of other things you can pick up on Amazon, but nothing was coming to mind. Recently on Reddit, somebody asked what to blow $50 on, and somebody suggested a mini RC helicopter. I’d never seen one before, and I started checking out videos on Youtube. They’re pretty sweet, and several companies make these miniature models for around $30. I figured I’d make an impulse purchase and pick one up.

I ended up getting a 3-channel SYMA. 3 channels gets you up/down, left/right rotation and forward/backward movement, which is a lot more fun than the 2 channel models you normally see at this price range (no forward/backward; 4 channels also gets you left/right strafing). It just came in the mail today, and I’ve already given it a couple test flights. For what basically amounts to a toy, there’s a pretty steep learning curve. In two flights I’d gotten it into more or less stable hovers, and could kinda guide it around the apartment, but kept it to about three feet off the ground, since I was crashing about every 20 seconds. On my second flight, I kept it in the air for a solid minute or so before losing control trying to guide it into the bedroom. I’ve completed five flights (a 15-20 minute charge gets you about 5-6 minutes of flight), and I’m not losing control as often and can generally keep it in the air for the entire five minutes, though I’m still not so hot at navigating it around. I’ve also completed a couple successful intentional landings.

Nina had a much more successful first flight than I did, and I’m hoping at some point she can keep it in a hover steady enough for me to take some in-flight photos of it. In the meantime, here’s a couple I took on my desk right after my first flight.