I started to learn how to fly helis with a Blade CP Pro before I got a simulator. I took my time, crashed a lot, and found that my progress was really slow. Got hold of Real Flight 3.5, practiced with it a lot, and my flying skills immediately got a lot better with the real heli. In my case, it probably would have been a lot cheaper for me to buy the simulator before starting to fly the real thing.

A simulator can't completely take the place of flying a real heli because it doesn't duplicate the psychological factors that you experience when flying a real helicopter. There are things that I can do easily on the sim that cause me to freeze up when I try to do it for real. Just one of those things that you have to get over if you want to take heli flying to the next level.