Haha this little sucker is awesome! Mine just came in today. It's WAY smaller than I thought! Here's a short runthrough based on my experieces today:
Unpacking/assembly instructions:
1. Screw the antenna into the transmitter and pop the 9V battery into the back (make sure it's oriented correctly, there are markings for which way it goes). My antenna had some tape goop on it, so make sure to clean that off if you don't want it to be sticky.
2. The helicopter is secured to the foam by two pieces of tape. Don't just try to yank it out, carefully unpeel the tape (I bent the corner foam pieces down so I could undo them) and then lift the helicopter out.
That's it for unpacking and assembly, pretty easy. Nothing to even put together on the helicopter.
Initial setup and training:
1. Turn the transmitter on, then the helicopter (never turn the helicopter on first!). A red LED will light up on both units after powering each one up.
2. "Prime" the chopper for 3 seconds by rapidly pushing the throttle to max (left trigger) and then pulling it back down (according to the instructions).
3. Make your helicopter go up then down: push the throttle (left trigger) all the way up. Don't push it up slowly or just a little bit because it will tip over (again, according to instructions). Push it all the way up and it will shoot straight up. SLOWLY lower the thottle a little bit until it hovers. If you get caught up in the moment and it starts going towards the ceiling and you panic and pull the throttle all the way down, it will drop like a stone. If you go less than about 3/4 of the way from the top it will slowly decend. Just play with it. It's definately more of an art than a science. (Note: you CAN get it to hover pretty stably after you trim it, see the next step)
4. The helicopter's battery comes partially charged from the factory for you to tweak stability. There is a trim button under the right trigger which lets you counterbalance the helicopter from spinning. I had to put it a few notches to the left to get it to stop spinning. I haven't been able to stop the spinning 100%, but it's not a big deal. Play with the trim until you get it fairly stable.
5. Practice turning (spinning) the chopper. For some reason mine seems backwards - with the nose facing away from me, pushing the steering trigger (right trigger) left makes it go right and right makes it go left. Somewhat counter-intuitive, but maybe I got a mis-wired model - the instructions say it should go right when you push it right if the nose is facing away from you (as if you were in the pilot's seat). Weird but oh well. The key here is GENTLE movements of the stick. If you treat it like a video game and push it really fast right or left, it will spin like crazy (which is kind of fun ). Think of flying a chopper like giving it a gentle push with the wind - kind of like a boat but not even that precise with this particular model. edit: just saw bigbangtech's review, I'll resolder it tonight.
6. Once you have hovering and spinning mastered, try going forwards and backwards. Forward speed is pretty slow and it takes a couple charges to master, but it is possible. You need to give it some more throttle because making it go forward makes it drop in altitude. It's tricky because you have to juggle altitude and direction, which takes some practice. Also, because the blades are spinning, the chopper will tend to spin slowly in one direction or the other. You kind of have to tweak the steering controls so that it flies straight and hovers. It takes some practice. Rear flight is faster and seems a bit easier to control.
Additional tips:
1. It says not to fly it outside, but you can as long as it's not windy. There was a bit of a breeze outside and my Dragonfly went all over the place, so the manual is definately right on that count.
2. The manual also says not to fly it near large solid surfaces since it tends to get "sucked" into them (like a wall). Lack of currents/airflow/thermals/whatever, I guess. Also if you have the A/C on or a fan on it will affect stability
3. Battery life is 5 or 10 minutes, like 15 max before the battery starts wearing down. When it's done, it's done. It starts going a bit slower and then it just dies, flat out.
4. As far as exploding batteries go, I talked to my dad, who is an r/c buff, and he said to let it sit off for like 10 minutes before charging it. When you use it or discharge the battery, it gets hot, and when combined with the heat from charging it can cause problems. I don't know if that's the root cause of the other explosions, but it's a good safety precaution. It will be hard to do because you'll want to play with it again and a full charge takes like 30 minutes