Car commercials are as old as TV. There’s nothing really exciting about the format anymore because we already know the format. To sell a luxury car, a B-rate celebrity often points out the finer things. Trucks commercials showcase manly men preforming manly tasks. So it’s only fitting really that that an R/C car is the star of a Nissan Sentra SE-R spot. (because they have similar driving characteristic. You got that, right?) Anyway, the clip above is the upcoming commercial, but the real treat is the 7 minute video after the jump that shows the great lengths taken to make the novel spot happen.

[via Autoblog]

China-based Quanum is offering a bomb system called “Bombs Away” for radio-controlled model airplanes that can be installed “in seconds” and fits most of the planes with engine size 0.25 or bigger out there. All that users need to do is to connect the bomb’s servo wire with a channel on the radio and then stick the bomb’s release pod to the airplane.

The bomb splits in half so that you can fill it with any payload you want. It can then be dropped in mid-air from your plane and be reused later as long as it stays undamaged. Quanum says an impact protector should protect the bomb, which is made of nylon, from the worst possible damage, for example when the bomb hits a rock.

The model is scaled at a proportion of 1:6, weighs 103g and is 23.5cm long. You can already buy the bomb on the web, for example here (price: $16.95).

Via Hobby Media (hat tip to Francesco Fondi)

We told you about the AR.Drone that we saw at CES, but here’s an alternative that you can build today. Sure, it’s not iPhone/iPod controlled, but it does everything else.

The AeroQuad is an Arduino controlled, four rotor helicopter, built by a group of enthusiasts as an experiment. Admittedly, it’s not as polished as the AR.Drone, but you can (if you have the skills) build one yourself using commonly available parts. Having flown RC helicopters in the past, and having seen these videos, it’s safe to say that either the electronics are doing an amazing job of compensating for the instability in the design, or the pilot has a really steady hand. You can get a parts list and basic instructions from the builder’s website. Definitely let us know if you build one.

[Via Make]

I’m not an RC gadget expert, but modding static model kits of space ships so that they’re water-proof and can be RC-controlled to make them then “fly underwater” seems like a very, very geeky thing to do to me. Take this 1/350 scale replica of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-A space ship from Star Trek, for example.

Some person [JP] in Yokosuka, Japan, bought the static kit and transformed it into a space ship that can move and be RC-controlled underwater. The people belonging to the “underground” circle of these self-made gadgets call themselves “Aqua Modelers” and meet up on a regular basis [IT] to exchange ideas and show off their works each year. The last one apparently just took place a couple of days ago.

See the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-A in action in the video below:

Another example of the aqua model craziness can be seen in this video where we see an awesome 1/350 scale replica of the Space Battleship Yamato floating around underwater:

Unfortunately, these models aren’t for sale.

Via Modellismo Hobby Media [IT]

Thanks to Francesco Fondi for the tip!

Just yesterday we featured Bandai’s cool remote-controlled heli-robot Sky Armor, and now the same company (its subsidiary CCP, to be exact) announced the Mission Carrier SWAT [JP], a combination of a truck and helicopter. And this toy is even better than Sky Armor.

The cool thing about the SWAT truck is the sound and the elevating deck: Push a button on the remote to make the panels in the back of the truck open and reveal the mini helicopter inside of it. The helicopter can then be controlled just like every other RC helicopter (for 5 minutes after a 30 minute charge). Needless to say, you can also let the truck itself drive around.

The Mission Carrier SWAT set will be available only in Japan from the end of this month (price: $90). Contact the Japan Trend Shop or Geek Stuff 4 U if you want to get one shipped outside Japan.

This video shows the truck and heli in action:

Smart. And a little gross. An Italian company has resorted to using remote-controlled toy submarines to run fiberoptic cable through the sewers of Milan.

The model of the submarine is apparently the Neptune SB-1, a $600 toy by Thunder Tiger of Taiwan. There’s a full article here but it’s in Italian. Seems pretty self-explanatory, though: attach cable to submarine, drop submarine into river of poo, pee, and bathwater, then pilot said submarine down to the poor sap on the other end of the pipe who’s gotta fish the thing out and connect the cable to whatever needs rigged up.

In unrelated news, think twice about bidding on used Neptune SB-1 toy submarines on eBay — you can never really know where they’ve been.

[via Slashdot]