RE: Heli's are hard, I give up.
Hi simm08.. yes, the disk is hard to see at times, but if you get used to observing it when you can see it you will gain some skill relating it to the angle of the dangle of the body. The two are pretty tightly related with the rigid rotor system of models.
Anyway, the idea is to keep the heli pretty close to upright in a hover. If it's tilted in any direction very much then it's going to be headed that-a-way pretty quickly. The tendency is to get too much tilt to correct a drift, so then it drifts the other way even faster, and on like that. Pretty soon there's nothing left to do but vomit.
Training gear make it a lot easier to see the tilt because they stick out so far, and for that reason they should be gotten rid of as soon as possible. Otherwise you'll get too dependent on using them to recognize the tilt of the contraption.