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What starts you onto a particular hobby, and how do you keep the fun in it. In my case, I always wanted to fly a radio-controlled helicopter, but they seemed well out of my price and knowledge range. My first helicopter had a 2 channel transmitter, which meant it went up, down, left, and right. After half an hour, I was utterly bored with it. It did teach me a lesson though. The wrong choice at the beginning of a hobby can put you off completely.

I persevered, and the second helicopter I bought was a small 3 channel affair. This also did the up, down, left, right thing, but with the additional excitement of forward and back movement. Now this definitely whetted my appetite, and I quickly wanted more.

Where to go next, that was the problem. After reading some model helicopter forums on the Internet, I made up my mind. My next purchase was a 6 channel, ccpm mix swash, belt drive Honeybee King 2. When you move onto these '30'size helicopters, it shifts from being a toy, to a serious hobby. Although quite large (approximately 20inches in length including canopy), the King is still light enough to be affected by even a light wind, and almost impossible to fly in winds over 12mph.

Three of the six channels on the transmitter operate the swash. This is not only the expected up and down, forward and back movement, but also lets you yaw the helicopter left or right. All of this gives you a lot more complicated mix of directions, and those complicated 3D manoeuvres we all strive to achieve.

These 3D manoeuvres (piros, flips, loops, etc) are not for the fainthearted, but each successful move adds to the utter fun of this hobby. In fact, the grin of success has been known to take a full week to fade.

The fourth channel controls the tail rudder, allowing you to swing the tail left or right. Finally, the fifth channel the King uses this for the rate gyro. This helps to stabilise your tail direction. This is different from a head hold gyro, which as the name suggests, holds the helicopter head in the direction you point it.

As you can see, a five or six channel helicopter is obviously a big jump from those cheap two channel jobs that may tempt you into this hobby. It won't surprise you then to realise that you need to commit quite a large amount of time, and because of the more complicated setup, attention to detail. I can't deny though, a lot of the fun is in the build.

Another interesting point to remember is that most helicopter models

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