Since the economic crash in October 2008, Ka-Planes’ business base has reduced significantly and has precluded us from replacing the most needed and wanted parts, airplanes and helicopters. With the significant financial losses I have endured over the last 18 months, I have no choice but to close the business.
Since opening in March 2007 as the second Falcon 3D retailer in the US at that point in time, there have been nearly 2,500,000 page views of my website. I am proud to have served our customers by offering low prices and support services and I especially enjoyed welcoming and helping the new hobbyists get their start. Of course the best news was and will always be hearing and seeing pics of the “first hover”.
I will continue to buy and test new and different helis in order to keep up with the technology. Any time you have a question on helis that I have tested or any other type of question, feel free to contact me.
I will remain available via Kaplanes@aol.com for questions, product support and/or general correspondence.
Thank you to my customers and to the friends that I have made while in this endeavor.
Best wishes,
Mike Kaplan
President
Ka-Planes n’ Kopters
The Kaplan Objective, LLC
7/25/2010
The following depicts most of the helis I personally tested over the past couple of years. Some were good, some great, and some bad. Some of the helis were keepers and we sold them in our store, some were rejects from the start. I carried a couple of them and disbanded them after a short period of time due to repeated premature electronics failures. I stopped carrying some of them for financial reasons, including but not limited to warranty issues. I tested planes as well, but the list is not as exhaustive as with the helis.
If you have some questions regarding any of these helis, I can only give you my opinion, but they are based on the fact I had the opportunities to test each and every one of them.
Leonardo DaVinci made the first real studies of flight in the 1480's. He had over 100 drawings that illustrated his theories on flight.
Hewas fascinated by the phenomenon of flight, Leonardo produced detailed studies of the flight of birds, and plans for several flying machines, including a helicopter powered by four men (which would not have worked since the body of the craft would have rotated) and a light hang glider which could have flown. On January 3, 1496 he unsuccessfully tested a flying machine he had constructed.
The ornithopter flying machine was never actually created. It was a design that Leonardo DaVinci made to illustrate how man could fly. Some experts feel that the modern day helicopter was inspired by DaVinci's concept.
Orville and Wilbur Wright.
"In 1878, when Orville and Wilbur were ages 7 and 11, their father brought them a toy "helicopter." It was based on an invention by French aeronautical pioneer Alphonse Penaud. Made of cork, bamboo, and paper, with a rubber band to twirl its twin blades, it was a little bigger than an adult's hand. They later said this sparked their interest in flight. During the next few years, Wilbur and Orville tried to build these themselves, but the bigger they made them the less well they flew. Somewhat discouraged, the brothers turned to kites."
Aviation History Excerpt from wright-house.com/wright-brothers.
First flight (controlled power), December 17, 1903. Photo by John T. Daniels of the Kill Devil Hills Life Saving Station, using Orville's tripod-mounted camera.
In 1906, two brothers, Jacques and Louis Breguet, began experimenting with airfoils for helicopters and in 1907, those experiments resulted in the Gyroplane No.1. Although there is some discrepancy about the dates, sometime between 14 August and 29 September 1907, the Gyroplane No. 1 lifted its pilot up into the air about two feet (0.6 meters) for a minute. However, the Gyroplane No. 1 proved to be extremely unsteady and required a man at each corner of the airframe to hold it steady. For this reason, the flights of the Gyroplane No. 1 are considered to be the first manned flight of a helicopter, but not a free or untethered flight. That same year, fellow French inventor Paul Cornu designed and built a helicopter that used two 20-foot (6-meter) counter-rotating rotors driven by a 24-hp (18-kW) Antoinette engine. On November 13, 1907, it lifted its inventor to 1 foot (0.3 meters) and remained aloft for 20 seconds. Although this flight was smaller in its achievement than that of the Breguet brothers, it was greater in accomplishment being that it was the first true free flight with a pilot. The Cornu helicopter would achieve a height of nearly 2 meters but also proved to be unstable and was abandoned after only a few flights.
