SO, THE RADIO-CONTROLLED HELICOPTER CAME, and I have to say, it’s a steal for 29 bucks. It’s small, but jewel-like in construction and seems to be pretty rugged. It comes with spare rotors and tailrotor blade, though. The remote takes 6 AA batteries; the copter charges via a USB connection. 45 minutes or so is good for 6 or 7 minutes of flying. It’s pretty easy to control, though it takes a very light touch on the vertical control, while the forward-and-reverse — which is driven by a rotor at the back, not by tilting the main rotors — is a bit slow to respond by comparison. It was easy to get it to take off, hover, fly around the room, and land, though I overshot once and hit the ceiling fan (about 15-20 feet up in the living room) and that produced a tumble that nonetheless left it undamaged. Lots of fun for the price, though. It’s charging as I write this . . . .

UPDATE: Mike Flynn emails:

I received mine today (thanks for the link), and it is a blast. I was caught shorthanded on AA batteries, but I managed to scavenge enough from the Flip camera (from another Instapundit link-thanks again) and a spare TiVo remote to get it in the air.

You are right about the build quality of this thing. I can’t believe it was only 29 bucks. It seems pretty durable and looks really cool. It is a bit touchy on the vertical control, but after a few minutes and a couple of fairly spectacular crashes I had it flying pretty well.

Thanks again for the tip. Keep the great Amazon links coming! Oh, and all the other stuff, too.

I’ll try.