10 days or so ago, I got myself a PicooZ and got instantly hooked on flying RC-Helis. The Picoo is a lot of fun, but it is very difficult to get the toy-grade heli to move as intended. Everything is a bit wobbly, you only have 2 channels to control it (pitch and roll are not available), and while it's a lot of fun to cruise around the office or the living room, you soon come to a point where you'd really like to have bit more freedom in what that thing you a controlling does. A real RC-Heli comes into play ;)

I dug into the material, and several places on the web suggested to “start small” with a coaxial heli¹⁾ as those are self-stabilizing and thus a failure in control does not immediately lead to catastrophe and high repair costs. Everything pointed to getting a Blade CX2 as well, so after some pondering and reading reviews that's what I did. And I must say, I'm very happy so far with that choice.

It is indeed very stable, and a lot of fun to steer around the garden²⁾. I also got myself a copy of the ClearView RC Simulator and hooked up my Blade's remote control to the PC (via a 3.5mm audiocable in the trainer jack and SmartPropoPlus) for the more windy parts of the week. Of course, I couldn't resist the urge to give the Airwolf model in ClearView a quick try. Ended with a negative landing height *cough* Full-fledged helis are a bit tougher to control than my Blade

Still learning to hover tail-in, moving around and keeping position over ground at specific locations. Let's see were that leads me And keep your fingers crossed for some non-windy days in Darmstadt in the weeks to come, so I can properly practice on the field