Tuesday evening I took a little trip to Wal-Mart. My wife, my step-daughters, and I each scoured the toy aisles looking for RC toys that caught our interest.

Daughter Lyla beat my wife to the Speed Racer RCs (Go Speed Racer, Go has been her theme song lately) but they both zeroed in on Hot Wheels R/Cs. Sarah went for a big truck (despite being a wired model aimed at 4 year olds) while Sam spotted a flashy sports car that turns out to be from a company that specializes in collectible diecast vehicles as well as RCs with really nice paint jobs and good details.

As for me, with my renewed interest in things that fly I was drawn to an indoor airplane with a cool kind of oontroller. Instead of buttons or sticks, you control it with a flick (or more properly a twist) of your wrist. Tilt the controller left or right to make the plane fly in circles. Aimed at age 12 and up, I think kids as young as seven or eight -- with help from mom or dad -- would have a lot of fun making this RC fly around in circles. Older kids and adults could add some figure 8 flying. Check out this selection of RC toys that we found on the shelf this week.

Have you tried out one of the Estes planes with the motion-sensitive controller or any of the other RC toys mentioned? Tell us about it.

After you've been running your electric RC for awhile you have to stop and have a cool down period. Even if you have an extra battery pack charged up and ready to go, you need to give that motor a little rest. That's something my son has trouble comprehending sometimes. As a result, I've had to replace some internal components that got overheated. One of these is the electronic speed controller or ESC. Just like the battery pack and motor, the ESC needs a rest too. My son's Traxxas Stampede has a had a couple of meltdowns that resulted in replacing the electronic speed controller. His ESC has a heat sink designed to draw off heat from the delicate electronics inside but that's not always enough.

Remember, in the long run you'll have a lot more runtime if you include sufficient downtime during playtime (my wife came up with that clever line so blame her if it makes you groan!).

I love the idea of flying RC helicopters. I can do OK with the little toy versions. But as long time readers of this site know, I am no pilot. I have a hobby grade electric RC helicopter but I can't do much more than lift up off the ground and land again -- not always gracefully. But I have a trio of books from Traplet Publications that all focus on RC helicopters. The most important one for me right now, and any beginning or wanna be pilot, is R/C Model Helicopters - A Guide for Beginners by Malcolm Messiter. I'm not one to sit still for long to read a book but this one gets my attention -- in part because it's short, but fairly thorough.

A family member recently bought his first RC boat. Just as I recommend in Best RC Boats for Beginners, he got "a ready-to-run electric sport boat with a deep-vee hull design." Specifically, it's the Traxxas Blast, one of the models I suggest for beginners. It's just the right size for large swimming pools -- like at his apartment -- but can also be taken out to a pond or lake. The only real issues he's had with the boat are that it has no reverse -- so you better slow down and start turning or leave plenty of room for drifting to a stop before hitting the side of the pool or other obstacle and there was a little problem with water. The electronics are waterproof so that's not an issue, but it still kept getting water inside the hull. We addressed that problem with a quick fix of silicone.

Want to get your kid hooked really early on RCs? Now days there are several kinds of radio controlled toys that are easy enough for even toddlers to operate. Toys Guide Dipika Mirpuri gives decent marks to the My First R/C GoGo Auto line from Kid Galaxy, calling it "a soft, easy to use and uncomplicated R/C car for your little ones."

Trying to remove a glow plug with a pair of needle nose pliers is possible but a glow plug wrench is specially designed for the purpose and can be easier to use (and you'll get a lot less grief from your dad or your wife or whoever you keep borrowing tools from). But don't think that just because it's called a glow plug wrench that you can't use it for other jobs as well.

As you'll discover, there are plenty of other ways to use that handy multi-purpose glow plug cross wrench -- even if the only RCs you have are electrics.

On a hobby-grade electric RC the most common adjustments you'll probably be making are getting your drivetrain gear ratio (spur gear/pinion gear) set right and making adjustments to the slipper clutch.

That's all well and good but if you're new to hobby-grade RCs it may also sound completely foreign. So, first things first. Let's get back to the basics and describe the key elements we're talking about here:

• Drivetrain
• Spur Gear
• Pinion Gear
• Slipper Clutch

Now back to those common adjustments.

The gear ratio setup helps determine things like speed and power. Some gear setups provide your RC with a lot of get-up-and-go right off the line while others may have you starting off more slowly but give your RC more top end speed. Changing your gear ratio setup is most often a bit of trial and error, mixing and matching different spur gears with different sizes of pinion gears. Often RCs will come with a selection of different size gears so you can choose the setup that works best for you.

If your RC is equipped with a slipper clutch you may find yourself making adjustments to suit the type of track or terrain. On a short track you might want to tighten the slipper to give a little more punch around the corners and off the line. You may also want to try tightening the slipper clutch if you're having trouble pulling wheelies with your RC.

Loosening the slipper slightly on longer tracks can help you maintain consistency on the long sweeping turns. But on any type of track, long or short, if you have a lot of jumps you want to loosen the slipper a bit because it can put too much stress on the drivetrain during landings if it's too tight. As with the gear ratio setup, it can take some trial and error to find the balance for your slipper clutch -- and you may want to tighten or loosen it for different driving conditions and for the experience of knowing first hand how different settings affect the performance of your RC.

On a nitro RC there are a lot of little things you have to do to get it ready to run and after-run maintenance tasks that need to be done before you put your RC away for the day. But while you're running your RC the one thing you're likely to be constantly messing around with are the fuel adjustments. You might get it set just right one day and think you'll never have to change it, but that's not true. Changes in the weather as well as track conditions or changes in your brand of fuel mean that you may have to be making lots of little fuel adjustments -- leaning it out, richening it up to get the right settings for that day and location.

When you're just starting out with RCs you probably already have some of the most basic tools -- like flathead and Phillip's head screwdrivers. And when you purchase RTR RCs the manufacturer often includes little specialty tools such as a glow plug wrench. But do you have a good set of hex head wrenches? Also called hex keys or Allen wrenches, these are little L-shaped tools used for screws and bolts that have hexagonal (6-sided) sockets. And on most RCs, there are lots of those.

So, along with your precision screwdrivers and needle nose pliers, get yourself a variety of the smaller hex head wrenches, often sold in sets, in both SAE and metric sizes. You'll use them for taking off pinion gears, adjusting throttle linkage on nitro engines, loosening drive cups on mini and micro RCs, putting on new helicopter blades and making blade adjustments, replacing the shaft, and the list goes on and on.

And for those who might not be all that familiar with hex wrenches here's a few pointers:

• You can use either end.
• Use the short end in the screw or bolt when you need more torque or power (such as on an especially stubborn screw).
• Use the long end in the screw for those deep, hard to reach or tight spots on the RC.

It's disappointing to bring home a new RC or dig out one that's been in the toy box for a while only to discover that when you press a button or turn a wheel on the transmitter nothing happens. Fortunately, a lot of the time the problem is an easy fix -- like making sure the RC and transmitter or turned on or that the batteries are good. From the obvious to the not so obvious, here's what to do when your RC won't respond to commands from the transmitter.