Space is good!
Well, the second set of blades didn’t last very long, so I ordered 3 more sets!
 With another set of blades fitted, I thought I’d check the pitch with my fancy (well, cheap actually) new pitch gauge. All seemed well!
After plenty of near misses and too many not misses, I decided it was time to find a larger flying area. I live in a small village and am lucky to have two large areas to choose from (cricket ground and rugby ground).
It was so much nicer to have more time to react to what the heli was doing! I’m not saying that I hovered or anything fancy, but I managed to take off and land with minimal crashing 
As Buzz Lightyear once said “This is not flying, it’s falling with style”
Unfortunately, my youngest son was unable to forsee where the heli was heading (wasn’t it obvious?! 
), so I had to do an abrupt landing. Even more unfortunately, it broke the mounting for the vertical fin - so it was home time.
Luckily, I did have a spare mounting bracket (2 actually) supplied by the previous owner. Taking the rear rotor off to replace the bracket was slightly scary but it all went well.
Later on in the afternoon I headed out for another try.
I wasn’t necessarily trying to do so, but on one occasion the heli gained a reasonable altitude (3ft?) quite quickly … and all of a sudden the rotating stopped and it became almost stable !?
 3 feet?? 3 feet off the ground??? What was I thinking?!?! Get it down man, quickly!!
Thankfully, I managed to make earth and heli meet at a reasonable pace and nothing was broken. I don’t really know why I was so scared?! I had flown my Lama at 15ft+ before (very calm day!), but seeing the King that high was extremely nerve-racking!
Saying that, I managed to do it a few more times and it was starting to feel less scary - then came the landing too far. Nothing drastic, but the previously damaged fin finally snapped and flew off into the distance. I found the bit, but I didn’t have a spare or any means of fixing this one, so once again it was home time.
It may sound like a bad ending but actually, the surprise stability at 3ft has given me renewed hope that I will master this helicopter flying thing one day. Master … maybe that’s too strong a word …