HARDWARE
The ever-shrinking nature of electronics has made radio-control model airplanes so small and light that one can fly them almost anywhere. This new breed, called "park fliers," requires almost no skill to assemble and is supremely easy to fly.
My favorite is the well-engineered Wingo, an odd-looking aircraft made mostly of plastic foam, with swoopy curved wings and a tiny, silent electric motor. Thanks to nickel-metal-hydride rechargeable batteries, flight times can reach, even exceed, 20 minutes. You can also run many shorter flights on a single charge. You have complete control of the motor, you can even turn it off in the air so the plane can ride on thermals like a hawk.
There is something wonderful about circling in the late afternoon lift with a real bird as your guide. If the lift dies and the animal takes wing, you can turn the motor back on to bring the Wingo down to land at your feet. The aircraft's soft, bulbous nose and slow flight speeds mean that if it runs into a person or an object, it is not likely to cause damage, and its rear-facing propeller will be out of harm's way. This is the most civilized radio-controlled airplane I have seen in my decades of flying and teaching beginners to fly model planes.
I've flown my Wingo from the infield of a softball diamond, used it to teach my 7-year-old daughter how to fly model planes, and impressed my son's math teacher with its aerobatics over a small parking lot. The Wingo can loft a small camera triggered by the remote control with which you fly it - my friend Neil used the plane to take superb aerial photos of San Francisco area landmarks.
Assembly's a snap; there are only a handful of pieces to put together with five-minute epoxy, and there's no woodworking involved. Accessories include floats for water takeoffs, radio-controlled and free-flight gliders you can launch from the Wingo while it's in-flight, lights for night flying (and for starting UFO rumors), and a Wile E. Coyote pilot figure. If you're a beginner, it'll save you time (and a few crashes) to get an experienced flier to help you out. Landing is the tricky part (with any airplane, model or otherwise). Oddly enough, knowing how to fly a full-size airplane doesn't help much in flying models, but model fliers learn to fly full-size aircraft more easily as a result of their small-scale experience.
Wingo: $119; model airplane radio system, $89.50. Distributed by Hobby Lobby: +1 (615) 373 1444, www.hobby-lobby.com.
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