Greetings all. My first post. I'm another 40 year old going to 12 bitten by the R/C bug. I've been watching the electric heli hobby online for about a year working up the nerve to spend some money. A trip to Costco in December sealed my fate when I bought myself one of those little Air Hogs Reflex heli's for Christmas. For about a week I had a blast flying it around the living room. Several crashes later I concluded my $65 would be better spent elsewhere. Thanks to Costco's liberal return policy they got it back (beat up a bit!). I shopped around and decided to go with a CX/2 in order to learn to fly. Here's a snapshot of this beginner's five weeks of CX/2 ownership:

Week One - charge it up and start hovering and crashing. What a blast! I'm hooked but don't like waiting 2 hours between flights. Ordered a 850mah aftermarket lipo that somebody on this forum suggested. $25 toward the hobby.

Week Two - Several more flights and crashes and alas my lower hub is broken. Upper and lower Microheli CNC heads and some spare blades and I'm back int he air.

Week Three - Fly, crash, repeat! With each flight I gain more confidence. I love this hobby. This nose in business is no problem at all. I decide to move out of the house and fly over the field in front of my house. Unfortunately I take an agressive turn while moving at speed and I experience the dreaded blade clack. Little pieces of blade explode through the air and my bird crashes to the ground. I find I've now broken my skids and the body is getting trashed. Thanks to this forum I decide to send Stearsman some money.

Week Four - Skids and MkIII boom arrive. Excellent quality. Can't wait to fly. Hovering around in the garage and my four year old hides behind a bicycle and says "Come get me daddy." Who can resist a challenge like that? My weakness and weak low level skills fail my little CX2 and I break my last lower blade during te famous "Lower Blade Shortage of '02". In the meantime I've ordered Vortex inner and outer shafts, Vortex flybar, and Vortex motors.

Week Five - Grounded waiting for parts.

Week Six - Back in the air with the Vortex parts installed and new blades arrive. I had to trim down the bottom of the inner shaft with a Dremel tool because it protruded into the battery. I also had to use wire cutters to cut the molded Vortex head off of the top of the inner shaft in order to mount the Microheli upper on. My first flight with the Vortex parts is wobbly. The heli shows some toilet bowl effect and a tendency to fly forward even with forward trim pulled all the way back. ADD gets the best of me and I don't bother trimming and adjusting. I want to fly outdoors and I have a cool little field across the street from my house. Two batteries later and I've done stuff with the heli that I never could do outdoors before. You can still lose control but this thing has so much power I can actually recover from a wild banked turn. FFF is super fast compared to what the heli did before. I've made some really agressive turns and pirouettes and haven't had a blade clack yet.

My next plan is to try some of the aerial cam stuff. My next big RC step is to invest in a sim and conquer a variable pitch heli. I get a bonus in the Spring. Perhaps a sim and a 400 series bird are in my future.

Thanks to all who've posted their upgrades and experiences. Happy flying.