Grounded.... Again.

Wind died down so I took it out. Pretty unstable, so my "flights" were of the 10 second variety. Trying to figure out what is really going on. Finally the odds caught up with me and I popped the tail rotor off. No damage anywhere, but I can't find the pin for the tail and one of the bearings. I don't have a spare, and the hobby store is too far away to make a trip just for this, so I'm grounded again. EDIT: did some more searching and found everything but the piece of fuel tubing to hold the tail rotor on. I'm sure I can find something to use instead of that, but now it looks like thunder and rain are moving in.

I've said in the past how much I like this little heli, but I'm beginning to alter my view based on the last week and a half. 2 weeks ago I was at the park and it was rock solid. Everything was precise and worked well. Hovering and forward flight was all very smooth and I felt ready for some more advanced manuevers. Now this week I don't even feel comfortable hopping it in the air for a few seconds. I know how it flew before, and I know what I'm capable of, so this is very frustrating. I can accept pilot error, but trying to get this ill handling thing going again is killing me. To make matters worse, the closest hobby store to me is zero help, and the store that is helpfull is over an hour away. I gotta try and find someone else locally flying to see if they can help out, but don't really know where to start with that.

I'm looking forward to the TREX that I should have next week. I'm trying not to pretend that a new heli will solve all my problems, but the simple fact is that I had one crash EVER with my Concept .30, and I never crashed my Corona, and now this heli has crashed multiple times. It's all been minor stuff still, but it's really getting to me. I already decided that I was not going to put a lot of money into the blade, and like others have said, every dollar I put into the blade is one less dollar I put into my TREX. Sadly, I won't be able to get the TREX in the air for a bit, so I'll have to suffer a bit longer. I'll still need to buy new radio gear and battery/charger. I'm trying to buy it in a way that the wife won't completely freak out as well.