I have to make a small confession, I am an RC addict. Yes it's true I love anything Remotely Controlled. It can be a 40% gas powered aerobatic airplane, a sailboat, or the tiny little Zip Zap cars. I'll play with all of them. With the advent of Lithium Polymer (Li-po) batteries the number of small RC vehicles has exploded over the last couple of years. These batteries are small and powerful, which allows for even smaller and more powerful RC vehicles. Megatech has been on the leading edge of providing quality RC vehicles for the RC market. One of their latest releases is the Avion, a small foam RC Biplane designed for indoor use. When asked if I'd like to get a chance to review this plane I jumped at the opportunity to have something else RC to play with. So now that I have confessed that I like to play with RC "Toys" let's dive in and take a look at this little airplane.

Megatech Avion (on display stand)

Length: 8.75"
Wingspan: 7.5"
Weight: 8.4 Grams
Requires: 4 "AA" Alkaline Batteries
Charge Time: 20 Min
Price as reviewed: $99.99

Megatech's Avion will convert your living room into an indoor aerodrome. Boasting a tight 3-ft turning radius Avion is a high performance, precision controlled, highly maneuverable, ready-to-fly, easy to use, indoor aerobat.

• Weighing in like a feather at a stunning 8.4-grams, Avion is also the safest R/C model ever offered.
• Avion's high-lift under cambered reflex airfoil provides the slow-flight stability
• The 100% built Avion will deliver endless hours of R/C fun
• Fully proportional throttle and rudder (w/electronic trim) for precision control with Spectral-Link Optic-Control' guidance
• Extended runtime performance LiPo Battery charges directly off the transmitter using the peak conditioning Revita-Charge' system.

The Avion comes in a glossy printed box that provides a very accurate description as to what's inside the box. Megatech has designed the box to both attract potential buyers as well as give them good information about the product inside of the box. Opening the box reveals a Styrofoam inner box packaged to isolate the components inside the box from shipping damages. The instructions and all other documentation are packaged on top of the inner shipping box.

Lifting up the instructions reveals the Avion BiPlane, the controller, and a display stand all packaged in the Styrofoam inner box. The controller for the Avion is a small plastic control that resembles the radio control used for larger aircraft. The Avion itself is made out of a high density Styrofoam that keeps the plane light yet very tough to absorb the 'bumps and bangs' it's going to get while flying. The wings and elevator of the Avion are preformed into an airfoil shape and also made out of foam. They can be 'twisted' in order to tweak the flying characteristics of the plane.

Looking at the tail of the Avion you'll see a large rudder assembly that is controlled by a micro coil type servo. These coil servos have been used by micro-RC flyers for years and are simple, reliable, light, and give full control over the rudder of the plane. The propeller is located behind the wings of the plane. This is a good layout for a plane such as this as it will protect the propeller from damage during flight when the plane hits things. There simply isn't any way to have the propeller come in contact with anything it might hit while flying. Also included with the Avion is a small display stand. While it may sound silly, I think that this was really cool to be included with the Avion. With the Avion sitting on it's display stand it won't look out of place sitting on the desk at work. And let's face it, there is nothing wrong with having an 'Executive Stress Management Tool' (a.k.a. Toy) at work to blow off some steam during the day!

Instruction Manual

In today's world of cheap toys that come with a few diagrams as instructions the manual for the Avion is a breath of fresh air. As I opened the manual and started looking at it I was actually surprised with the amount of material and detail included in the manual. First of all the manual is a well written manual that is documented with clear color pictures and diagrams that clearly explain the material being covered in the manual. The manual is written so that even a person with no flying experience can understand what makes the Avion fly as well as how to make adjustments on the plane to improve it's flight characteristics. The manual also explains how to fly the Avion in a way that should get just about everybody airborne quickly. Megatech gets good marks for their instruction manual.

The Controller

The controller for the Avion is a simple box in a similar layout to most RC controls out there today. There are two sticks to control the Avion - the left stick being the throttle and the right stick being the rudder control. Underneath the rudder stick is a trim tab to adjust the trim on the rudder in order to obtain hands off level flight. The trim tab works surprisingly well for a plane this small. A 3-position switch located on the front of the controller controls the power for the controller. The three settings for the power switch are On, Off, and Charge. On the top of the controller are 4 clear LED's, which are the Spectrum-Link Optical control for the Avion. These LED's need to be uncovered and facing the plane while in flight in order to maintain control of the plane. If these are covered up, or do not have line of sight with the plane, the plane will shut off and fall to the ground. Also on the top of the controller are 3-status LED's, two power status LED's to show the status of the controller and a charge LED that is used when charging the plane (see below). The controller for the Avion is also how the plane itself is recharged. Located on the left side of the controller is a small compartment that has the charging plug located inside. This is nice as it's impossible to forget or lose the charging wire as it's always inside of the controller.

The Plane

The controls for the Avion are located on the underside of the nose of the plane. They consist of a three-position switch and a charging jack. The switch is used to turn the plane on and off for use as well as to allow the battery to be recharged. The charging jack connects the plane to the recharging plug located in the Avion controller. The Avion is different from most other similar RC planes on the market today in that the throttle and rudder controls are fully proportional. Most others have a simple on-off control for the functions of the plane. The Avion allows for any throttle setting from off to full power, which gives it a great range of control while flying the plane. With this control of the throttle it's easy to vary the altitude of the plane to wherever the pilot wants to fly at.

As with the throttle the rudder is also fully proportional. One great advantage of this is that it allows for the rudder trim to be adjusted on the controller. This lets the user correct the plane so that it flies straight and level with hands off the controller. The coil micro-servo on the rudder allows for full deflection from side to side when operating the controller. This lets the user choose how tight of a turn they will make. Anything from a slow sweeping turn to a tight 3' radius turn is possible with the Avion.

Batteries and Charging

4 AA alkaline batteries located in the back of the controller provide power for both the Avion controller and the plane itself. Simply remove the battery compartment lid and place the batteries in the controller. The orientation is labeled on the back of the battery compartment cover.

The plane is powered by a Lithium-polymer (Lipo) battery located inside the plane body. In order to charge the plane it needs to be connected to the controller via the charging cable. The cable is located on the left side of the controller inside of a small access door. To charge the plane the cable is connected to the charging jack on the Avion, and both the controller and the plane power switches are set to 'Charge'. While charging, the 'Charging' LED (the left of three LED's on the controller) will glow red. When the plane is completely charged this LED will change from red to green, and the plane is now ready to fly. The Avion charge time is approximately 20 minutes, but will vary with how far discharged the battery actually is. When flying, the Avion will start losing power when the battery is ready for recharge, to the point that it will become very difficult to fly. A set of alkaline batteries is good for many recharges. I wish I could give a better number than that, but I still haven't had to replace the batteries so I don't know exactly how many you can get from them.

After letting the plane charge up from the controller I switched on to check that all the controls were working properly. Both the throttle and rudder controls were working fine so it was time to get airborne. With the throttle at full power a gentle level toss put the Avion in the air. Immediately the plane started circling to the right. The plane was definitely in need of trimming. I used the trim tab on the controller to try and put some left rudder into the plane. After a couple more flights I decided that I needed to put some physical adjustments into the plane. I twisted the entire tail assembly to the left a bit as well as flexing the trailing edges of the wings to put in some faux aileron controls. After a couple more flights and adjustments the controls were finally right on and the plane was ready to fly. The only other adjustment that was needed was a little bit of nose weight. While flying I noticed that the plane had a tendency to 'balloon' up with full power. We looked around the theater for something to add weight and found a roll of duct tape; several small strips were taped around the nose of the plane to add a little bit of nose weight. With some weight on the nose the plane now flew straight and level, even at full power. Now I was ready to have some fun.

When flying the Avion the biggest thing to get used to is the fact that there is no elevator control on the plane. In order to climb you will need to increase power, and to descend you'll need to cut power. But it doesn't take too long to get used to that. After a couple minutes I was really getting into flying this little plane. I was really getting a kick out of cutting really tight turns over the stage area. I decided to fly out over the seating area of the theater and the engine just quit, and the plane dropped into the seats. After a little bit of checking I discovered that I had covered up the IR LED's on the controller. Since this plane is controlled optically this killed the link to the plane. This is really my only complaint about this plane as I accidentally put my fingers over the LED's several times as we flew, but after reminding myself not to do that it was fine.

As we were shooting video and still pictures for this review one of the actors in Minnflyer's play stuck around to watch us. After we had all of the video and pictures done we asked him if he'd like to fly it some. In fact, I thought this would make a great addition to this review, as he had absolutely no previous experience with RC craft of any type. (I have included his flights on the Flight Video). We gave him a quick 5 minute class on how to fly the plane and turned him loose. I'm not going to say that he didn't hit anything in the theater because he did his share of bouncing off the walls, ceiling, and curtains. But within 5 minutes or so he was able to fly the plane around the theater with ease, having enough control to get the plane to go where he wanted it to go. I thought that this was probably the best thing to say about this plane- it's not just for experienced RC pilots to fly. People with no previous experience will have no problems at all flying this plane.

During all of this flying I did notice just how tough this little bird is. While it is made out of lightweight foam it is very durable. During flying this we crashed into just about everything in that theater including curtains, lights, seats, and even the piano. The plane took it all in stride and didn't suffer any damage at all. Because of it's light weight it can handle all of the 'bumps and bruises' that come from flying a plane indoors.

After getting the video and pictures shot we hung around for about another hour 'just playing' with the Avion. We handed it around and gave everybody a chance to get a turn flying it. It was amazing to see such a little plane give such big smiles on the faces of all who flew it. It really is a fun plane to fly around.

After all of the flying sessions we did in the days while I was doing this review I have made up a list of some tips & tricks that might help out others who are going to be flying the Avion.

• Balancing the Avion. My Avion was a bit tail heavy. While flying it wanted to "porpoise" up. In order to correct this add some nose weight to make the nose of the Avion heavier. A good source of nose weight would be to stick straight pins into the foam at the nose of the plane. Add a pin at a time and check to see how the plane flies with each pin you add. In our flights we used duct tape to add weight to the nose. We put 4 small strips of tape across the nose of the plane and this was enough weight to get the plane to fly level.
• Making small trim adjustments. While Avion does have a trim adjustment on the rudder channel, you may find that you need to make smaller "fine tuning" trim adjustments to get straight and level flight. Small adjustments are very easy to make by simply "flexing" the control surface you need to adjust. The wings and tail surfaces of the Avion are made of a foam that you can bend a bit to make adjustments to by simply flexing it in the direction you need. For instance, if the Avion still banks even with rudder trim you can flex the wing tips at the trailing edge to adjust the bank of the plane. This will have the same effect as ailerons on a plane and can be used to correct banking in flight. You can also make adjustments in the attitude of the plane by flexing the trailing edge of the horizontal stabilizer such as a elevator would.
• The Avion can be flown outside as long as you do not do fly it in direct sunlight. The bright sunlight will interfere with the Spectra-Link optical link. I found that flying at dawn and dusk was easy to do as the winds are usually very low and there is no direct sunlight to interfere with the optical link of the controller.
• Scotch tape makes an excellent repair material for the Avion.