Jim,

I have a HBK2 also with a 3900kv brushless motor and a HobbyWing 25A ESC. A ton of other upgrades too - most notabily Xtreme plastic blades, a Logitech 2100T Heading Hold gyro (with fast digital tail servo) and a Dx6i programmable transmitter with spread spectrum receiver. Aside from the motor and ESC, one cheap upgrade that seems fairly common is the Xtreme 43T ("tooth") tail drive pulley ($15.70 http://www.ushobbysupply.com/product...63020130d54fb0 ). It provides a lot more tail rotor speed, and helps the gyro hold the tail stable.

For my money, the HBK2 is nearly as big as the "400 class" helicopters but because it is a little smaller, most of the parts seem a little cheaper - which is good. You can fly quite nicely with a smaller motor (although the 3900kv is close to a 400 size), smaller ESC, and smaller battery - all of which should cost less than the same parts for a bigger copter. HBK2 replacement and upgrade parts are very easy to find from a number of vendors (although my favorite is U.S. Hobby Supply!), and there is lots of experience and expertise with them in forums like this. I figure that after I learn to fly decently with the HoneyBee, then I'll think about the bigger investment in a nice 400 class copter - like the beautiful Copter-X ( http://www.ushobbysupply.com/product...63020130d54fb0 ) that is already on my Christmas list!

If you don't already have one, you should probably plan to get some flight simulator software for your computer, with is very useful for saving money in avoided crashes. There is a free one called FMS that is packaged with the E-sky flight simulator ( http://www.raidentech.com/rcflsitolefl.html ) package (and downloadable for free too: http://n.ethz.ch/student/mmoeller/fms/index_e.html ), but because it never worked too well on my Vista system I prefer the $39 ShareWare "ClearView" flight simulator ( http://rcflightsim.com/download.html - that has photo-realistic sceanery, many models to choose from including the HBK2, and it works perfectly "out of the box" with the E-sky USB controller.

My friend Michael at U.S. Hobby Supply recently recommended this web "flying school" to me too: http://www.dream-models.com/eco/flying-index.html after seeing me try to hover for the first time. (I think he was trying to tell me something... [8D] ).It promises to help minimize crashes as you are learning and so far has been working for me.

3D flying is very complex and dangerous until you are really good and very practiced at regular flying, and others out here can advise you how to learn it better than I can - but on that topic I would just say to have reasonable expectations. It seems to take most people who ever do learn it years to get there.

There will be a ton of people out here with different opinions, but I hope this helps!

Dave