I have an X-Cell gas with the original G230PUH engine. I'm still running wood 690mm blades. I'm hoping to buy some carbon blades soon.

I use about -9, 5 and +12 degrees of pitch in Idle up 1 and 2.

My throttle hold and "normal" (or what I would call hover) is set for -5, 5 and +12 degrees of pitch. I keep meaning to put in as much as I can get for pitch in throttle hold, but since I haven't been practicing those yet I haven't, but hope to practice soon.

I strive to make all flight modes (hold, hover, idle up 1 and 2) to have the same pitch at hover so the heli will not jump around as I switch flight modes. So right now all flight modes look about the same from hover to max collective. The only difference is that 'hover' and hold modes have a slightly softer negative pitch so transitions into or out of those modes to the others will vary if I am below hover pitch.

I setup the hover at 5 degrees. My stick is set for half stick being 0 degrees. I tend to think I need 6 degrees for hover, I'll have to review this. I'm using wood blades right now.

I'm using the GV-1 govenor and have about 1500 rpm for slow hovering, 1600 for idle up 1, and 1700 for idle up 2. 1500 rpm is about as slow as I would go as the heli seems so slow at that head speed.

As to the needles, there are only two on the gas X-Cell. Your idle needle is set for a barely rich hover. This is evident by the tail bobbling a very little bit. If you see your tail bobbling around a LOT then you either don't have your engine broken in yet, or you are running a bit too rich. If you try to accellerate from idle (or a bit higher than idle) and the engine seems to lag a lot, your idle mixture is probably too lean.

Set the high needle for full pitch climb outs. I'm guessing my two needles are about 1 1/8 turns open or so. Start with 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 turns and you should be ok.

I'm using coleman fuel (it doesn't smell like gasoline) and am using Amsoil 100:1 cabable oil, but I am currently mixing at 80:1 mixture. That's 1.6 Oz per gallon of fuel.

I have on board temp also. I think my head temp can vary from 270 to 340 degrees depending on the day. I'm not sure exactly yet as recently I found out I was running too much pitch (about +14 degrees!!). I was trying to see why my engine was loading so much. Now I know I had too much pitch! So I'll have to keep an eye on my new tempurature range with the proper pitch now.

I'm told the new G231PUH engine will run almost 100 degrees cooler than the G230PUH. But I haven't seen one yet to confirm that.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention, MinAir advises to use a metal head (not the plastic one) and aluminum upper frame sections if you are going to be carying heavy loads (camera equipment, etc). You should think about doing this later as you gain flight experience.

I hope this helps some! I've had my Gas X-Cell since 1996 and I was babying it since then. This year I've started looping, rolling, fliping, etc... it's a blast and uses only pennies of fuel.