One more thing while it's still on my mind. Every time I start her up, the main blades turn at idle. If I bring the idle down, the engine dies. It's not a huge issue at the moment, since I can still keep the heli under control until I go to walk away from her to fly. I have just modified my prep to accomodate the issue. Instead of grabbing the rotor by the blade grip at the front of the canopy to see where the tail is going, I grab the rear blade grip to allow the tail boom to rest against my leg while walking to the runway. Once she's on the ground, I maintain a grip on the rotor while ensuring that the blades somewhat straight instead of on cocked off to the side and throwing her way off balance on spool up.

Also, if I hold the rotor head for to long at idle (sometimes just the time it takes to get from the pits to the runway or less), she dies. To temporarily remedy this, I allow her to warm up for a minute or to before going to the runway, then keep the throttle just above idle while carrying her, bringing the throttle back to idle when I release the rotor, then back to just above idle while walking backwards (to keep an eye on her) back to my flying spot.

At hover and above, she has plenty of nice thick smoke coming from the exhaust. At idle, there is no smoke, but she's spitting plenty of oil onto my finger when I hold it a few CM away from the exhaust outlet for a couple of seconds. I haven't performed the "pinch test" to verify the low idle setting.

Once on the runway and just above idle, she runs great now until I shut her off by plugging the exhaust with a covered (for protection from the hot muffler) finger (method I've used successfully for cars and planes that won't shut off by a radio kill switch).

Thanks for sticking with me and helping this poor glutton for punishment out.

Happy flying.