RE: aero hawk a piece of crap?!
 

I bought an XR-1 which is almost the same as the aero hawk in February, along with the Great Planes ReqalFlight simulator. I flew the simulator ecery night for a week while waiting for the XR-1 to arrive. I was able to "hop" the XR-1 around a lot the first night and within a week was able to hover for a few minutes at a time. After a month I could hover for about 10 minutes and after 6 weeks I finally hovered a whole battery pack (2s 1100 mah LiPO) which is about 20 minutes. It took a LOT of hours on the simulator to progress this fast. Two weeks ago I got a Shogun and have that up and running and getting 12 minute flights on it.
I've probably spent $200 on repair parts for the XR-1 including main and tail rotors, main gears (3) main shafts (3) and 1 tail motor. I upgraded to the "ball in swash" and the 1000 mah LiPO. Balancing the blades is very important.
I also spent a LOT of time reading posts on all the fixed pitch helis and before flying the Shogun did the same with all Shogum/Zoom posts and as many posts on other collective pitch e-helis as I could.
Knowledge+practice=skill and the more you can get on the simulator the better, since mistakes are neither costly or painful!
Stay with it! When it finally starts clicking for you it's a great feeling!
The bottom line is the XR-1 did what I asked it to - let me try R/C helis without a huge investment.