My uncle used to fly them and it was common for newbies to build 'a rig' that you could learn to fly before ever going near the real thing. The rig was simply a piece of flat wood about a foot square, it would be pivoted from the underneath central point and have the rc gear and servos connected so that it movements would mimic the rotas. On the centre of the wood you would place a marble/ping pong ball or something similar and then practice 'moving' it around the surface without it ever dropping off. He said that once you were able to move the ball to all four corners and then back to the center without any accidents you were ready to progress to the real thing.
My only first hand experience with a RC helicopter was at a model shop in Frodsham. I used to be quite heavily into 1/10th scale rc cars and knew the shop owner, on one of my visits for upgrades/spares he attempted to sell me a helicopter. I explained my fear of how fragile they appeared and unlike with RC cars where you only have to worry about two directions, I had no confidence in controlling one with the vertical plain to worry about too. In his efforts to convince me that it was definitely for me, he took it to the car park at the side of the shop to give me a demonstration.
The car park was quite large and on one side was a row of houses and the other two a brick wall of about 9ft. He set the helicopter down in the middle, fired it up and proceeded to make it hover at around 5-6 ft from the ground. After a few slow turns he took it a little higher, this was the point where he lost the sale. As he cleared the hight of the wall, a gust of wind took hold of it and flipped it 180 degrees with virtually no notice. The helicopter smashed into the tarmac surface and disintegrated into a several large and a few small pieces. Once we had collected them all and gone back into the shop we priced up the costs for replacing the broken parts...£190
At that point I picked up my new bits for the car and left, thanking him for the excellent demonstration
