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Please do not take this as criticism, I am only trying to feel/understand your pain and keep you in the hobby! I have been reading about all your issues, and wanted to add some thoughts.

I take it by your signature that you flew real helis. I have never flown a real aircraft (but wanted to desperately!), but have been told MANY MANY times by people that did and moved into RC that the difference in perspective of actually being in the aircraft flying it and being on the ground flying an RC is extremely difficult to overcome. I've actually heard that a lot of real pilots do not become very good RC'ers because of the mental change required by the perspective change. I feel this may be playing a part in the difficulty you are experiencing.

Bottom line is - keep at it!! I would love to have a pic of the grin on your face when you finally feel YOU are controlling the heli rather than the other way around!! (might need to be a wide screen pic though!!!)

Now, if I am totally off-base, please let me know (kindly, please - no flaming allowed!!)

What![>:] Nah, I'm fine. I've been at this for 10 years. You can see my fleet in the "my models area" here. With the helicopter game here, I am trying to avoid all the mistakes made by all of us when we first started out. This is why I am asking many questions as not to waste money or time. Part of the fun is tinkering with it all. I fly my planes very conservatively and plan onthe same with these. The onlytime anybody will ever see me fly a helicopter upside down will be completely by accident and probably out of control! I throw in some fullscale info to help some who have no clue as to why things do what they do to help get a better understanding of what is going on behnd the scenes. There is a bigggg difference in these and full scale but the basic principles still exist.

As I read and participate, I see many who have great ideas and install items that makes sense to me and at the same time, i see many who do not do this and I wonder why, these are little tricks as the same in glow or gas rc planes. The fuse trick is great. Having that blow out cannot only prevent losing your engine or other stuff but also tells you at the same time -you have a problem somewhere.

If I knew a month ago what I know now, I would have blown off the AXE or the rest of these types and gone with the T-rex or MX or something along them lines and get set up better. Its hard enough to learn to fly these helis with a decent one never mind one that seems to make things worse. Also at the same time, anybody who can hover these AXE with an ounce of controlable value, will have no trouble hovering a larger one.

Later guys

I also would love to have a T-Rex class heli (and hope to get one sometime next year) - but figured I better ease into this aspect of the hobby (oh, all right - I figured my CPA (wife) would have less grief over a cheaper new toy!)

Too me there is a better advantage to learn on the T-rexes or similar birds because of the consistent rpms of the tailrotor. If you notice on these AXEs, the tail does not start up right away and even if you do get it trimmed out, the motor back their is on its own sheet of music. Pretty screwy setup. Anyone who has the patience to deal with it wil be fine on anything else. Right now as i see the most important thing to even attempt at keeping this AXE consistent is the "right battery."

If your not using a Lipo, there wil be problems. So this new one I have in the mail will also have a lipo setup and charger. My HDX is due to be delivered tomorrow

Ahh, but the tail rotor speed is ONLY constant if you are running idle up - otherwise, it varies with the head speed in normal mode. Are you trying to fly in idle up? If so, I would get normal mode mastered first!

As a side note...

I'm thinking the tail rotor on the axe is almost never constant, even in idle up.

It has a gyro, albeit a cheap dumb version of a rate gyro, that senses initial changes in angular velocity and then makes a correction to stop that change (but no effort to return the tail to the original position).

To this day, I look back and almost can't imagine how I flew that little gremlin. My brother has it now and is fighting the whole way trying to get it. If you can hover the axe you can hover anything!

Being forced to keep the tail where it needs to be really complicates the learning process initially IMO but probably helps you out in the end.