Air Hogs Hawk Eye Channel A

Spin Masters

For years, Air Hogs has been building memories for children and adults alike with their fun and innovative airplanes and helicopters. I remember being in the backyard pumping air into the old Sky Shark, hoping to reach a new altitude and a lengthy flight. I don’t think there was a toy that I had as much fun with, even with more failures than successes. When you’re a kid you don’t realize that you’re mastering the concepts of aerodynamics and air propulsion in your very own backyard. Needless to say, I jumped at the chance to test out one of their newer models, the Hawk Eye Channel A.

The Hawk Eye caught my attention when I heard it was one of the first “Camera Copters” from the Air Hogs fleet. Aesthetically, it has the looks of a helicopter with soft landing skids, a long tail, and a rotor system. On the other hand, the body and fuselage have the looks of a small video camera with a lens protruding from the front. The overall appearance makes it look like a small video camera with wings. A major upset for me was the body that had the looks of a hard and shiny plastic on the pictures and box, but turned out to be Styrofoam. Obviously, mass is going to be a huge factor when it’s powered by batteries.

Even with the Styrofoam body and thin plastic propellants, it was built to last. On my first attempts I crashed it into every surface imaginable spinning erratically as it came crashing to the hard ground. The Hawk Eye held up better than expected. This particular model, as I could assume with others, does have a bit of a learning curve for those novice pilots. It took a bit of tweaking and “trimming” around but finally had it in the air, diving, elevating, and going around corners. The only drawback with operating that I found is the Infra Red controller. In order to get the best flight possible I had to be within a couple feet of the copter. This model is a 2 channel so it can maneuver up and down and left to right. Once I mastered the controls, it was then time to test out the camera.

Although you do have to be relatively close when controlling, I could still sneak up on some people who weren’t expecting an aerial assault (shown in the commercial). The Hawk Eye is also fairly quiet which adds to its stealth when taking pictures and capturing video. Honestly I wasn’t expecting much more than some grainy and “blurred out” shots from a 320 x 240 camera and a 640 x 480 video camera, again I was surprised. Both the pictures and video came out with fair quality, what you would expect from a lower pixel camera phone. The Hawk Eye was also easy to keep stable during flight due to its Tail Lock technology. The built-in software detects slight instability within the rotors and flight and makes the vital adjustments.

Taking your pictures from the copter to the computer is as simple as a USB. You can watch your 5 minutes of video and share pictures from the convenience of your computer, all the while fueling up your copter. Yes, the USB doubles as a charging port. Another great addition is the video and picture editing on the Air Hogs site to add some personal details and effects.

The Hawk Eye is great for those beginner pilots who don’t have the thousands to spend on the RC helicopters that go hundreds of feet in the air. With a $60 dollar price tag I think you’re getting more than what you pay for.

Grab yours now:
Entertainment Earth: $157.99
Amazon.com: $59.99

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