chefman,
Here's a sanity check I tend to do on all maidens to make sure everything is connected right. (be prepared to cut the throttle at any time if starts to go wrong -- it can go from a little bad to crash amazingly fast)
On a soft surface (grass):
- arm and spin up the props to idle
- slowly increase the throttle until the airframe becomes light on the skids -- not enough to leave the ground.
- one at a time, test each direction in pitch and roll by slowly increasing the stick command until you see the correct side begin to lift (BEWARE, it can instaflip the second a skid leaves the ground if you've got something hooked up or mounted backwards).
- repeat for all 4 directions.
Move to a smooth surface (concrete/asphalt/kitchen floor)
- Arm, spin, and get light on the skids
- test each direction in yaw (rudder) to see if it slides in the direction you expect
After that passes (or fails, gets fixed, then finally passes), then and only then do I pop her up into a hover 2-3' off the ground. generally from light on the skids, I give it a bump of throttle just above 1/2 and quickly throttle back down to 1/3-1/2 to catch it in hover. Don't do it slowly -- ground effect can do bad things to you, particularly if you're just starting flight or move through it too slowly.
I normally do all of this in rate/acro mode, generally because level may be calibrated poorly or so far out of tune it flies unhappy. I know, you may not be up to that, but if you can, it eliminates one extra source of "it don't work".