Weed whacker blades? Don't know how big ya'lls weeds are out there in Cali, but here in North Carolina and everywhere else I've been, the weeds ain't that big. More like riding lawnmower blades. LOL. Like I said, it didn't seem that close when I was there. Probably an acceptable distance for a small electric.

Anyhoo, I'll definitely have to check the alignment pin and double check the routing of the belt/pitch link. The tail boom rotated after I hit the tail on that first "hop", so maybe the way it hit just pulled it enough to pop it out of the alignment pin. It's secure to the point where I cannot rotate it by hand. I thought that I checked the controls after I replaced the servo, but it might have slipped my mind. At least it was caught before severe damage was done, and the damage from the first mishap because of it only cost me about $35 for blades and flybar (nothing else bent, and the damage on the blades was limited to the covering, but I chose to replace them instead of re-covering them with Ultracote. Better safe than sorry, as there could've been damage to them that I couldn't see, cheap insurance considering the cost of a crash from broken blades). I've had worse crashes than that on my little helis.

As for the training gear, I don't plan on using them long. Once I get her trimmed decently and get comfortable with her, I'll take them off. Should have them off in a few tanks (still haven't managed to run her for a full tank. All of my field startups have been on less than one tank of fuel. To be more precise, about 1/4 tank of fuel. Some issue rears it's ugly head before I can manage to burn through much fuel, causing me to shut down, inspect, and repair to avoid further damage.).

I'm sure I'll love her in forward flight. She'll most likely be the first I've gotten beyond slow forward circles with (I was only able to do that on one day before my 400 started acting a fool and not holding the tail). I know, it's taken me a while to build my skill in helis. I've been into helis for 2 years now. Right after getting my AXE CP (which I no longer have), and getting to where I could only keep her up for about 30 seconds (up from about 5 when I first got it), I had to deploy to Afghanistan for a year. That left me with only the simulator (which I didn't get until about March-May 2007 time frame). Got back to the states, started back "part time" with the helis (traded my AXE CP for a Blade CP Pro and picked up my Blade 400). At the time I was getting back into racing 1/10th scale electric touring cars, so that took up more time that I could've been flying. Got frustrated with the competitive atmosphere of the local parking lot racing scene, so went back to helis full time for about 3 months. Got to where I could hover the 400 decently, then got into planes in June of this year. I didn't even touch a heli again until about 2 months ago. That's when I finally got to where I could do slow forward circles with the 400, then she got the tail issue that I'm still trying to track down. I'm already very impressed with the Shuttle. She's not near as "bouncy" as my other helis, and doesn't wander around to bad (go to YouTube, look up my channel, and watch my Blade 400 vid to see what I mean). She feels a lot like flying the JR 50 that is on FSOne. I feel that if I can ever get her to where I can run her for a full tank without a red flag flying, my skills should progress much more quickly than with the 400. I'm already loving my Shuttle.

The wind isn't supposed to be so high tomorrow, so maybe I'll have another story for you then if my time permits.

Happy holidays to you as well.

Happy flying.