Air Hogs Storm Launcher RC Plane Review
Getting the box home, it is unbelievable how light the box is. When opened, it is obvious why the box is so light. The vehicle itself is made out of Styrofoam. The same stuff your DVD player was packaged in was used to make the body of the vehicle. Also included in the package are some extra propellers, the remote controller, battery, and battery charger. The only setup required was to remove the propeller guards. According to the instructions, removing the guards allows the vehicle to get more power.
After removing the guards, the only thing left to do was to charge the battery. The charging took approximately 30 minutes, and it was ready for the maiden voyage. I had never flown an RC plane before, so this was my first time attempting to fly.
The vehicle was set in the street and the power was turned on. The bottom of the pontoons are coated in a thin layer of firm plastic to allow it to scoot along the ground. I drove the vehicle all over the street, and found it pretty easy to drive. The goal of the first battery charge was to fly in the air and terrorize the neighbors. I never got off the ground on the first charge, however it was still a lot of fun to drive. It had lots of power, and the handling was pretty good. It is not like driving an RC car where the turns are very responsive, it is more like how I would imagine driving a hover craft. The vehicle turns by giving different amounts of power to each propeller, there is no rudder to turn left and right.
On the second flight, it actually took off. There is a control to make the elevator on the vehicle cause the vehicle to go up and down. Using this got the machine up in the air after going straight down the street and reaching full speed. Although it was off the ground it did not stay off the ground very long. Several runs on this charge all yielded similar results.
On the third flight, I was determined to get this thing doing loop-d-loops in the air. Not wanting to lose precious running time by trying the same approach I tried earlier, I thought it would be a great idea to hold the Storm Launcher in one hand and put the propellers at full speed with the other. Once everything was running at full tilt, I threw the vehicle into the air. It worked. The Storm Launcher took off and was completely in the air. By the time I got a hold of the controller with both hands, the vehicle had crashed right into my house almost detaching the left pontoon from itself.
This broken pontoon points out another benefit of this vehicle. Since it is made out of Styrofoam, the pontoon was fixed by simply using packing tape to secure the pontoon back in place. It was up and flying again in no time. This is a huge advantage when learning to fly an RC vehicle. If a normal RC plane was used, if it was involved in a crash such as this one, it could take a very long time and lots of money to get it working again. With the cheap manufacturing of this, repairs are cheap as well.
Overall this is a great plane to learn how to fly with. The price is cheap, and fixing the vehicle is fairly simple. Controlling the vehicle can be difficult at times, but after a few flights the controls become natural. Although it never performed for me like it did on the commercial, it was still a lot of fun to play with.
