I was flying my CPP for about 6 months and could hover nose-in and tail-in, in a fairly confined space in my apartment. Every time I went outside to try moving around....crash. It is a difficult little bird to learn with. I was very resistant to buy a simulator saying "that is the easy way out, i wan't to learn to fly this myself". I finally bought a sim and practiced for at least 3 months on it, never even touching a real heli, and I became very good in the sim (not a 3d expert, but I could fly any orientation, upside down, and had very good reactions to any problems). Finally I rebuilt the CPP and went outside where I had crashed so many times before, and amazing, it felt exactly like I was in the simulator, exept for the tail which is pretty out of controll on a stock CPP. But, my reactions were so good that the tail was not at all a problem anymore, I could hold the tail very well with my own inputs. moral of the story, I went from sim hater to sim lover, from cpp crasher to cpp pilot. I always hated the constant advice on this forum "get a simualtor" but I eventually learned it is very sound advice. maybe you have one already, maybe not, other newbies reading this, try a sim.