fun for big (or little) kids. (Micro Mosquito Radio Control Flying Toy)

Member Name: gump103

Product:	Micro Mosquito Radio Control Flying Toy
Date:	26/06/09 (33 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: fun, cheap, challanging, easy to pick up

Disadvantages: indoor only, doesn't like breezes

I've owned one of these for about 6 months after getting one as a present for christmas and have to say its been a lot of fun to play with and has left me wanting a bigger more grown up model.

The micro mosquito is a small (sit in your hand small) 3 channel remote control helicopter that allows you to fly in several directions. Up, down, forwards, backwards, and turn left and right are all posible and allows you to navigate around (and over objects) and have a level of control not posible in the 2 channel silverlit helicopters. It's been designed to look a little like an insect with stick like legs and green glowing eyes when in use.

The controls are nice and simple and basic flying of the helicopter is relatively simple as long as you keep it a resonable distance from walls and curtains. The helicopter uses a small motor at the rear to move forwards and backwards in a slow but steady pace, I found that I could fit a silverlit picoz tail blade to it for a bit more speed but this also causes the helicopter to swing about a little more.

The helicopter works by using counter rotaing blades and maintains its stability by literally hanging the body loosely under the blades so it can hang in a pretty stable way. The down side to this is that it gets severly affected by drafts or breezes from either wind or its own down draft. Flying near walls or curtains ussually means that it will get caught in its own down draft and get sucked into the wall in question. You also can't fly this outside even if it feels like the most calm day as even the most light breeze will throw it out of control as I found out when I lost it over the garage.

The blades on the helicopter are made of plastic with a metal ring fastened around them for stability. It is really quite safe to be flown around and have run it into many objects and people without any injury or damage. The flexable design of the blades mean that they can handle most crashes without damage and in the 6 months I've owned it I've only had to replace them once and that was due to my reckless flying whilst attempting a daring flight between the ceiling and the lights where it ultimately got stuck.

The helicopter itself uses a small rechargable LIPO battery which is chaged from the base unit which takes 6c cell batterys and lasts between 5-10 minutes before requiring another charge (each charge takes between 15-20 minutes). The controller takes one 9 volt pp3 battery and for both the batteries seem to last a good amount of time.

The micro mosquito was a present from friends and I don't know what they paid but looking on ebay and other sites they can be picked up for around £25-30 plus batterys and maybe a spare set of blades that will set you back a few more pounds.

In conclusion though this is a great little toy that is easy to pick up and use but can be as challanging as you imagination allows. Its sturdy and flexable enough to withstand the knocks as you learn keeps you coming back for more.

Summary: great fun.