Cinder1995-
I say yes, someone with good level of mechanics and understanding can figure this out fairly quickly. I bought the blade for it's simplicity because I just don't have the time right now to set up a heli but wanted to try flying them and I trust Horizon Hobby to make it relatively painless. I knew very little about heli's but now after three weeks I know a bit more and am still extremely happy with the little Blade CP. If you can fly a heli on a sim then you can fly the Blade right out of the box. BTW- I think it's easier to fly than the sim heli's. For those reasons I think it's the perfect training aid for new heli pilots.

As for tinkering to keep it flying I'd say yes, you need to repair the dings and re-balance blades, straighten or replace main shafts, etc. You will be able to tear it apart blind folded after a few weeks but that's the beauty of this thing is that you can! It's that simple. I've crashed it from 30' up into grass with only a broken landing skid and a bent main shaft which is not hard to straighten. I am now at four flights in a row with no crash or blade dings (which is good because I splurged on carbon blades) so all I do now is re-charge the battery. To get it to hover hands off you will need to tweak it a bit but it's worth it. I would have liked to see a little more for the rank beginner in the manual but you can certainly find everything here!