Syma S108G Micro Cobra Gunship

The Syma S108G Micro Cobra Gunship is another one of my little infra red controled indoor helicopters.

I have a lot of little helicopter but, in terms of looks and the way it moves, this Micro Cobra Gunship is the one I like the most. It's also the one I play with the most, it's so easy to fly and looks so cool flying around the house - I often pick it up and just fly around whenever I'm a bit bored, whatever the time of year.

I love the way it hovers so still,  and especially the way it stops so precisely when you spin it round, see the video at about 40 seconds to see what I mean - it looks so sinister and awesome, how could you not like it?

There isn't much else to say about the Syma S108G Micro Cobra Gunship really, it looks cool, flies cool and costs very little, £25 from Amazon UK, and comes with everything you need apart from batteries for the radio, which incidentally doubles as a charger.

Obviously you won't be busting any spectacular moves with it, it's only a 3 channel heli (forward back, up down, spin left right), but it is good fun to practice flying around the house with it, trying to get it to land in tight spots and fly under chairs and stuff.

I would say also that there are a lot of micro helis and budget rc helis that are terrible, really hard to fly for beginners, that put people off RC flying because they think they don't have the right skills. Well, sometimes it's not you it's the RC helicopter that's rubbish. If you see in the video where I take my hands off the controls, that's where my acolyte, Kevin, said "I guess you're flying it easily because you've had a lot of practice, if I were to try it would probably smash into the wall or ceiling" and I replied, "well no, not really - look" and hovered it in front of him and took my hands off the controls.

As a tip, if you're totally new, I can tell you that it's easier to launch these little helis from your hand than it is from the ground. Newbies tend to be really nervous with the throttle, edging it up tentatively because they don't know how it will react. The probelem with this, and this goes for any rc helicopter, quadcopter or hexacopter etc, is that you'll never take off that way - your model will always topple over to one side if you lift the throttle too gradually. This is because you're creating an air cushion, turbulence and suffering from 'ground effect'. This 'bad air' is about four or five inches deep from the ground (or table top) with this size helicopter, so you need to get yourself above that first with more throttle than you need to hover (i.e. push it up to that level right away with no gradual increase), then throttle back a bit to hover nicely. Or, like I said, if you launch it from your hand you can be more timid - feel when it wants to fly then let go of your Micro Cobra Gunship or whatever micro heli you're flying.