3. The E-sky Honey Bee Mark 3

When considering a fixed-pitch helicopter in the standard Sikorsky configuration, there are a few very popular models. E-sky's Honey bee is one of them.

The E-sky Honey Bee Mark 3 Ready-To-Fly Kit

One of the reasons the Honey Bee is a good choice - especially for beginners - is that you can buy it in an RTF box, which stands for "Ready-To-Fly." RTF means that the box includes everything you need to get started, including a remote control transmitter, batteries for the transmitter, a battery for the aircraft and a charger for the aircraft battery.

There are a lot of "almost ready-to-fly" kits out there, and if you're a beginner, I recommend you steer clear of these. In many cases they require expensive equipment that's not included in the box. Until you're familiar with the hobby, RTF is the way to go.

The E-sky Honey Bee Helicopter

The Honey Bee helicopter isn't that small, measuring about two feet long from nose to tail. It looks like a pretty standard helicopter, with a sleek little cockpit. Inside the cockpit shroud is the brains of the beast, comprising a "mixer speed gyro control system" that converts the remote control joystick responses into movement on the helicopter's control surfaces.

The remote control transmitter

As for the included transmitter, it certainly feels like a solid and quality piece of kit to me, but I admittedly have such little experience with these that you should take that with a grain of salt. Still, it worked well and felt good in my hands.

The included battery and charger

The Honey Bee Mark 3 RTF kit comes with a newer-style Lithium Polymer (or "LiPo") battery. This is a good thing, because these LiPo batteries have a much longer flying time compared to what the older NiMh rechargables offer. It takes about 45 minutes to recharge the LiPo battery, and it only has about 15 minutes of flight time. A spare is thus nice to have if you can afford one.

Speaking of afford, the entire Honey Bee Mark 3 RTF kit can be had for under $200. We got our Honey Bee from Hobby-Lobby.com, which is the North American distributor of E-sky's RC products, and when we last checked their site the kit was on sale for $149. This is pretty reasonable for a good piece of RC kit like the Honey Bee - heck, it's less than the cost of a decent motherboard.

Speaking of motherboards and the PC world in general, I am quickly reminded that nowadays there's nothing you can do that a PC can't help you do better. I am also reminded that I work for Tom's Hardware Guide, but I digress. In fact, the three most important parts of flying an RC aircraft involve the PC. But before we get into that, we have to go over a bit of ground school first.