I figured as much about the stock battery. I might stop in at the BatteriesPlus in town and see what they have. They fixed me up with a great 120/12 volt charger for the LiPo in my digital camera; I did some "modifications" to it so it will also charge the battery in the DV. The little Havoc POS I have flies for 6 minutes which is aggravating to no end. About the time the cat is getting pissed off, the thing dies.

The circuit board idea is great as well as the heat sink thing. I'm thinking a discarded CPU heat sink instead for the battery. I've got a bunch of those around here, some have pretty shallow fins too....Those little cooling fans I have will run off a button battery so I might try that too.

I have a good 50 or so carbon fiber rods about 2 feet long each left over from a dome tent gone bad. Hollow in the center and are probably "about" the right diameter.

I've been reading the Alternative AXE CP parts thread - our local overpriced snooty hobby shop has a fair selection of blades and parts that may fit.

The good news for me is I have so many hours on heli simulators (much to the chagrin of the wife), transferring the hand/eye coordination shouldn't be too much of a problem. What I hope to do is treat the training as you would real flight training and go slowly and carefully in agonizingly slow steps. With beer, of course. Note to self: put tape over the idle up and training switches.

For the tail and main motors.....would it better to get several less expensive brushed motors or just spring for brushless right off the bat and do the adjustments on the mixer board?

I should also confess the real reason for doing this. I host a crappy video on demand show and for an upcoming episode I need to be followed by a black helicopter. RC, Airwolf body - you can see where this is going.

Max