Well finally did it. High winds and lack of experience wiped out my blade 400. Didn't seem like it hit the ground that hard but when I walked over it was a yard sale. Still gonna rebuild it. waaay too much fun to fly. Think the wind was too much for the small helicopter. should have packed up and went home after landing it 3 times. Had to go for a fourth round and thats when it happened. Having a tough time at times with orientation of the helicopter. think that was also a part of why it went down. Is there any tricks to tell the orientation of helicopters? I remember on planes we used to cover the bottom wing and tail differently than the top to dipict orientation. seems like when i bank the helicopter sometimes i cant tell where the tail is at. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

The Great Curtis Youngblood suggested training gear balls of different colors on each side, bright colors or flourescent. It made sense to me. Just think, if from behind you go right ,and you're talking having say the green balls on the right. So nose-out you go right stick to go right,sure,but regardless of orientation going towards green would always get the heli going right.
Even now he said when practicing he'll have something on one side differentiating it from the other....wow ! Also I saw a guy with a really well done flourescent green on one side,orange on the other and man did that give a really good picture of what the heli's doing.
I should do that come to think of it.
My opinion is that if orientation is still something you're struggling with to the degree you stated it's not time to remove the training gear yet,either. Some will say'Oh, it weighs too much',etc. I say bunk.
Good training gear can save money,lots of it,while the zilion things to learn on helis is learned. Doug

I hadproblems when it was close to me say 50-75feet or so now that i'm out further 150 - 200 feet I don't seem to have the problem so much.Also go to youtube and look at nightfliers flouresent orange pillows on his gear.

I coulda used those things once or 56 times Doug

Great suggestions guys. Do heli newbies still use the training gear when they are able to fly it around? I guess I assumed it was to aid in hovering/ taking off? Trying to similate my crash on my sim and see where I went wrong. A few things im working on for the rebuild are color on top of rotor blades to tell which way im bacnking and to color both lower cheeks of the canopy differently to help me with direction. Im somewhat comfortable flying this around, but don't want to keep wrecking it either. Thanks again guys.

John Salt has an awesome internet book www.rchelicopterfun.com and some outstanding free video instructions on YouTube,both being the best I've ever seen/read. He speaks of 'putting the training gear BACK on', for instance when nose in hovering and maneuvering is being worked on.
It never hurts,and like I said, it'll save you money and lots of it.
We humans ,especially males,spend much time kidding ourselves. This comes from being a participant in this delusional thinking of 'I have this down' . So like now, I can do figure 8's,fast forward flight,but can I competently perform all the nose-in,backward,etc. maneuvers as if it were a reflex yet?
Uh....no . Which means I don't have anything 'down', and to moan about a performance degradation due to training gear being mounted is a little nuts,since my skills aren't sufficient to be sweating that or imagining it's hindering my progress in any manner whatsoever.
I wish it were so. It's not[&o] Doug

finless bob i believe shows how he take blaze orange kiddy arm floaties cuts em down and attaches them to the tops of his skids they almost look like water pontoons but arent used as such another thing i do is lay blaze orange sticky back used on airplanes on the rear fin and cut around the carbon fiber holes etc theres plenty u can do.

Hi there,

Another option to try is to put KBDD paddles and tail blades on (either orange, yellow, or green)...they are great for orientation purposes. You may have to sand down the tail blades a bit to get them to fit and if you decide to use the paddles, use the front hole (they have 3 holes for different flying characteristics).

[link=http://helidirect.com/kbdd-450-paddles-neon-orange-p-13674.hdx]Paddles[/link]

Mark