On the advice of a coworker, I’ve been looking for a Air Hogs Aero Ace Biplane for about the past two months. I finally picked up one at Target last week and I’ll have to say it’s the best toy ever. Of the about 10 people who have also flown mine, at least 5 have already bought one for themselves. The plane is less than $30, and can be picked up at Target and Toys-R-Us, among other places. The bi-plane is supposedly the only Air-Hogs plane that flys decent, although this is just hearsay and I can neither confirm nor deny these rumors. There are a number of different mod forums out there where people are doing everything from chopping wings off to modifying the transmitter/receivers to adding cool lights so its easier to fly at night.

Here are some pictures of Jayson’s un-modifed bipe, and mine, which I hacked tonight to tape the bottom wing to the top wing tips to increase glide performance. It turns out the problem with this hack is that it increases the performance too much: it will climb at 20% power, which is the lowest throttle setting, but you have to have throttle on to turn, since it uses differential thrust. So it ends up that you have to glide throttle off whichever way it goes then crank pulses of throttle to turn. Good for outdoors maybe but not for close flying or indoors, which is what really makes the things fun. Back to the biplane for me.