bdavison - excellent posts. I have been following your recommendations for a couple of months (since before I actually had a Blade). I had no trouble getting the little heli in the air after first making the modifications and adjustments I read about.

I have two suggestions -

1) you describe that the swashplate should be made level. I recommend that you instead refer to it as making it perpendicular to the main shaft - your drawings and recommendation to use a triangle suggest this. The problem with using a bubble level is that it assumes that the main shaft is perfectly perpendicular to gravity, which it probably isn't unless the work table, skids, etc have all been checked.

2) I have had good success balancing the blades while mounted in the rotor head, with the rotor head removed, and using the flybar as the pivot. Care must be taken to make sure all head parts are centered. The end result is that the entire head/blade assembly is then balanced.

Best Regards