It always amazes me that people would be willing to get even close to a heli that has the blades moving at head speed. This is just plain out a bad idea, and you are asking for an accident. Stay away from the heli if it is spinning, plain and simple.

The group here is right, if you are just hovering around, keep the engine rich and leave it there. Performance means nothing to you now anyhow.

I personally use a combination to get my engines tuned, I use a hand held temp gauge after flying around, I also use headloaders initially so I can watch what the heli is doing before I lift it off. I never touch my heli with the engine above idle, just a bad idea. I start by rough tuning with the headloaders, spin it up, see how it sounds, shut it down to idle and adjust. Repeat as needed.

Then I put blades on, fly it and wring it out a bit, land, idle, check temp, adjust repeat as needed.

Patience means you get to keep fingers and limbs attached.

As for the ladder trick, well its not the first stupid thing I have seen in that manual but it is probably the most dangerous.