I don't intend to flame you or anything but, at least for the shop I work at, it's not all about making a buck. We can make just as much money selling an Aerobird Challenger as we can selling a Parkzone P-51 Mustang to an inexperienced pilot. While we make more selling the P-51 since it costs more, we'll probably end up with a frustrated flyer who'll quit the hobby and say that's it. If we sell the Aerobird Challenger first, and the pilot gets the hang of that plane, he then thinks that he's ready to move up to a P-51 and now we've made money on two planes from the same person, and we've now got a returning customer who will probably get other stuff from our store. We'll make money on whatever we sell, bet it a train set, a plane, r/c car, model kit, whatever. But we make more when we gauge the skill level of the customer and provide the right product for that skill level, and then get a returning customer when he/she wants something else. Sure, you can always get this stuff online, but you don't get that kind of help online that you get in a hobby shop. (Plus, you don't pay shipping, and usually I've found that hobby shop prices are usually the same or about the same as online prices.)

Just another $.02, so that brings it to $.04

And about flying in the backyard, that's what I've been doing. I started flying over the backyard lawn, which isn't very big (my backyard isn't very big to begin with), and since the grass kept blocking the tail rotor movement, I threw a doormat onto the middle of the grass and put the helicopter on that for a flat surface. It worked better, but the helicopter was still difficult to control. I tried flying over the brick portion of the backyard, aware that if I crash here it'll do more damage. However, the helicopter seemed easier to control over bricks than it did on grass. I believe this has to do with the ground effect: the grass disperses the moving air and makes the lift uneven, while the bricks create a more even dispersion of lift. Flying over bricks is risky for the heli, because if those blades hit it you're more likely to screw something up, but that being said I didn't tip nearly as much as I did over grass.