RC Fly Boats

Intermediate to Advanced: New to the RC Hobby Universe are the hybrid RC Fly Boats. Also known as Hydro Foam Flyers, these look like hydroplane air powered boats but they also include rear wings with elevons and a topside rudder that enable them to fly in the air.

Most of these RC fly boats come as kits either with all of the necessary parts, including the radio system, or with just the boat pieces that require the additional purchase of the radio system i.e. Tx, Rx, and servos.

The original RC fly boat concept appears to have been a design that made it's way around the internet via an amateur video clip that kept getting forwarded from friend to friend.

This idea was quickly adapted by American, Chinese and German RC designers who quickly brought to market their own versions of RC fly boats.

The first U.S. version and highly touted design was the Miss Hangar One.

This item comes as a kit with most of the parts made of white Depron. It's about 29" long and 18.5" wide. Total flying weight is approximately 10-12 oz.

Of course, part of the fun is coming up with your own unique design!

Click here to see a video of the Miss Hangar One Fly Boat!

The second commerically available U.S. design is the HydroHawk ARF from FMA. This also comes as a kit but uses balsa wood for the deck and surface mounted control pieces.

Click here to see a video of the FMA HydroHawk2!

The first version from China was the Walkera Fly Boat. Walkera is best known for their radio controlled helicopters. I personally imported a few of these for our store and built one to become more familiar with it. There were no instructions included and I had to go by trial and error to get everything working correctly. With a few modifications I got it working on land, water, and in the air.

This RC Fly Boat comes with everything needed to fly including the transmitter and radio system. Because there were no instructions, I wrote my own for my customers to use and included them on the product page found on the RC Discounts website.

Click here to see video of the Walkera Fly Boat!

This is now part of the popular Air Hog R/C product line and can be flown by Beginners.

As you can see from the picture, unlike all of the other models, this new version has two motors that will make steering easier.

By controlling the amount of power to each propeller, the Storm Launcher can be banked right or left.

IMPORTANT: the Storm Launcher does NOT come with the battery flight pack and charger. this item must be purchased separately.

One of the most recent entries to the RC Fly Boat design is from German based, Ikarus. Also well known for their very high quality helicopters, Ikarus introduced the Wizard. Available in both a fully stocked kit and just as an ARF.

This is their second design. The first one was developed in 2005 but not put into production because of certain design changes they wanted to make in order for it to be easier to control and more user friendly for Beginners.

Click here to see the Megatech Hydrofly in live action!

I give Megatech a lot of credit for taking their time to get it right. Similar to the Storm Launcher, the Megatech HydroFly was designed for Beginners and Advanced RC enthusiasts. It's also priced for less than $100 which makes it very affordable.

This is a 3 channel fly boat with a safety "on" feature with three speeds. This means that to turn on the motor, you first have to move the left toggle all the way down. Then move it all the way up for low speed. Toggling full up each time increases prop speed.

To slow down, the reverse is required. That is, toggle all the way down. Each time you do this the speed is lowered. So the best way to describe this would be "3 speed fixed", as opposed to a variable speed control.

Another feature not seen on any of the other fly boats is the position of the propeller.

Megatech put the prop behind the fuselage. This unique positioning addressed two areas that are critical to Fly Boats:

1. Balance - the Megatech Hydrofly is well balanced and does not require extra rear elevator compensation to level off the vehicle. Additionally, with better balance and rear positioning, the Hydrofly is not suseptible to nose down, prop in the grass accidents;

2. Prop Torque - all of the single prop fly boats have very powerful motors that create an extraordinary amount of torque. To compensate for this, the motor mount needs to be positioned a few degrees to the right. This isn't required with the Megatech Hydrofly.

As discussed above, the left toggle is the throttle control. The right toggle controls the rudder which has only three positions: left, center (neutral), and right. These are fixed positions.

Elevator up is controlled by a red button on the top left of the controller. Again, this is a fixed position.