Customer Reviews

Air Hogs Storm Launcher

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

I am a great fan of the Air-Hogs Aero-Ace Bi-Plane, so I figured the storm launcher will be the next step up. The Storm-Launcher also has replaceable batteries (30$ each), and it has elevation control which means it can take off from the ground/water/grass.
So far so good; but when I tried to use it flaws became evident:

1. Without engine power it drops like a rock. So if you ran into a messy situation while flying forget about gliding down to safety. It will drop fast and hard. Which means that you have room for about 10 or so mistakes before the Storm Launcher might crash beyond repair.
2. My Storm Launcher refused to get trimmed correctly. I think my left engine was simply not as powerful as the right one. So no matter how much trim I applied it kept turning left.
3. The Storm Launcher did not respond to any command. Removing and re-inserting the battery was the only way to get out of this state. Basically I would apply full throttle trying to take-off and within 3 seconds the engines would stop, at that point the plane stopped responding to any command (throttle, lift, or power off/power on) The only way out was to remove the battery and re-insert it again.

I do want to give it extra credit for:

1. Storm Launcher is able to take off by it self
2. once flying its very fast
3. elevation control works very well

In Conclusion: A Storm Launcher plus two LIPO batteries will const 140$ which is pretty expensive for a not so reliable unit that will probably not last that long. Any alternatives you can recommend?

The Storm Launcher is a great toy. It's great out of the box if you just plan to do mostly driving and jumping. But if you really want to fly it a lot, it flys best if you remove the propeller guards, and cut off the upper horizontal (the upper rear wing between the verticals). In the commercials you can see some of them are flown that way. It becomes much easier to fly and is much more controllable, but then the verticals are a little easier to break. They can be easily fixed with some clear tape.

Just remember, the flight Times for one battery charge is only about 6 to 10 minutes, then it will shut off as to not hurt the Lipo battery. It can be restarted by pushing the start button to bring it back to shore but you will have to be easy on the throttle or it will just shut off again till you recharge it.

all in all, a great toy, loads of fun for young and old, The only real downside is the batterynlife once charged, only about 7 to 8 minutes, depending on how you manage the throttle. I love this thing, I will be buying another one.

Please disregard all of the reviews bashing the Storm Launcher. If you take your time and practice you can get the Storm Launcher to perform as well or even better than it does in the TV commercials. I've had my Storm Launcher flying at an altitude of over 300ft making huge circles over my neighbors houses. I have performed loops and even inverted loops. In my opinion the Storm Launcher is the best bang for the buck in flying RC planes. To get this kind of performance out of a hobby shop plane you would be looking at $250-$300.

You must realize that this toy takes practice to master. In fact you will probably break your Storm Launcher multiple times before you are able to fly it proficiently. The beauty of the storm launcher is that you can easily fix it and get it flying again. Try that with any other type of flying RC plane.

The key to getting great performance out of the Storm Launcher is as follows:

1. Practice in Expert Mode. Novice mode is worthless and if you want to fly you need to learn how to control the Storm Launcher in expert mode.

2. Break in in your motors for at least 8-10 battery packs by driving your storm launcher on the ground only and try to keep the throttle at less than 50% of full power during this breakin period. What this does is improve the performance of your motors and also gives you time to get a good feel for how the storm launcher responds to controller inputs.

3. Remove the prop guards per the instructions. Also cut off the horizontal on the back wing. If you pay close attention to the commercials you will notice that all the storm launchers they are flying have the prop guards and rear horizontal removed.

4. Once you have your motors broken in, prop guards removed, and horizontal removed you are ready to start learning to fly. I recommend you trim the elevator using the controller so that the elevator is slighty up. This will give you a small amount of continual lift and will help prevent you from face planting the storm launcher into the ground after take off.

5. Start off by taking your Storm Launcher to a large paved area with no obstacles. Realize that the Storm Launcher does not have enough power to climb with full elevator applied. You will stall out and crash. You need to give small amounts of full elevator followed by zero elevator to climb and keep your airspeed up. Same principle goes for turning. You need to use gradual taps of the stick on the controller to turn. Alternating turning and slight amounts of up elevator. Reason for this is that the SL uses differential thrust to turn. If you slam the stick one way to turn your SL will lose half of its thrust and you will lose altitude very quickly.

6. Be aware that when your lipo battery goes dead you lose all control of the Storm Launcher. You do not want to be up 100 ft in the air and lose control. Therefore I recommend that you time how long your batteries last and make sure to land the Storm Launcher and finish out the battery on the ground to avoid major crashes.

7. Do not try to fly in any wind over 2-3mph unless you consider yourself an expert. The Storm Launcher is so light that you will thrown all over the place by the wind.

8. If you do break your Storm Launcher use Elmers Stix All glue to put it back together. I also recommend packing tape to reinforce the glued area. I have broken my Storm Launcher into tons of pieces learning to fly but a little Stix All and tape and I'm back out there and flying!!

Although the basic design is foam and tape, the great feature is that it can be easily modified and easily repaired...which is good as you will need to learn to repair it as you learn to fly it.

This being said, I agree with reviews saying this is the best value out there for the buck. Once you learn how to do an inverted loop and snap rolls during a hair-raising dive, you'll agree.

It is also a great father and son toy, provided that both are patient and willing to get creative on both flying and repair work.

The first time out with the Storm Launcher can be a challenge -- read the instructions carefully before flying. I had never flown any remote control plan presious to this one. The trick is to have an open space and use the controls in a gradual manner. Once you get used to the flying characteristics it is great fun. I now fly it on my street between and over houses.

On the topic of construction -- yes, it breaks easily since it's styrofoam. My plane has so much tape on it it's almost unbelievable. It still flies easily though and I can keep it going for the entire charge time (just a bit over 7 or 8 minutes). Constanly using the max thrust will diminish flight times of course.

Two tips: remove the rear wing and only fly in calm wind conditions. Even after several weeks of playing with this I still have trouple flying in winds above 3 or 4 mph.

All in all a great toy once you get used to it!

First things first, i love this, sure it was not so good but some minor modifications and this thing flys like angel. But.... if your young son or daughter asks for this for birthday or christmas or whatever. you might want to start off with something simpler. If you son or daughter has no experience in RC flying, this is not the toy for him or her. Maybe try a beginner or intermideate plane such as the mini stormlauncher or the aero ace. And also if you are an adult just looking for something to fool around with. This is a toy but flies like a hobby grade level plane. Very fast. Very responsive. And for anyone. cut the horizontal stabilizer off, dont even hesistate! you can leave the proppeler guards on which i find useful for crashes. All the reviews that say it is a piece of junk im guessing have never flown an RC plane before or were given a defective one. But trust me, this is a great gift for a 12+ year old that has patience and a light anger. But only buy if you're ready.

(by the way im 12 and i can do loops and banks already in the first week)

The Storm Launcher flew up to about 4 feet once and then landed. And when it did, it never went up again. The toy is a little on the weak side meaning that the impact of just landing once made it difficult to operate after that. Apparently it affected the servos and rear stabilizer thus making it difficult to steer or control.

Ok i bought this at local toys r us, w/ battery pack. I do not recomend this toy for anyone under the age of at least 12. Out of the box you would think that this cost air hogs/spinmaster no more than $10 to make. Its made of light weight foam and motors are held on to the body w/ tape, yes tape! You can not have fun w/ this right out of the box, you have to "trim" it, meaning you have to do adjustments in order to operate properly. Once you got it trimmed, it does go on most surfaces and even really flies. If flying the battery will last no more than 10 min fully charged and will even die in mid air making for a crash landing. You are garanteed to break something on its first crash. It will not last more than 1 day for a child. I took mine back to the store got a new one and again crash landing same result, almost broke in half. Again took it right back and did not last more than a week when it broke again, and finally asked for my money back. Great idea but horrible materials and just a big junk! STAY AWAY!

I just got my SL here in Kuwait and i have to say it's a pretty good little thing to pass the time with.

Good points: It's fast (almost too fast) and i was impressed with the power of the little motors. For an RC made almost completely out of styrfoam it's surprizingly durable. (I crashed it headlong into the side of a building while flying and landed it upside down on a sand and gravel surface and it came out unscathed) It's fixable, being that it is made of styrofoam, it is very fixable should it break.

Bad points: It is somewhat difficult to control and definatly not for impatient people. I would put the age rating for it up to 15 years old. The directional response is not quite up with the throttle response. It will not glide, if it's flying and you let go of the throttle it will drop like a rock nose first. Battery life, Charge time is about 2hours for about 15 minutes of "fly time"

Now some of the bad points (such as the controlability) I can probably chalk up to me being inexperienced with R/C "flying things".

I have also seen many sites and reviews that suggest removing the prop guards and the horizontal stabilizer saying it will fly much better this way. I am going to try it.

All in all, I find it to be at the very least a quite interesting little toy. And I'm sure with some practice (and alot of patience) it would be a load of fun for anyone.