Well, if you power your PIC and the gyro off the same power supply, you shouldn't need to change your Vref's, since everything will 'drift' together. And on another note, I just bought an Eflight Blade CP Pro. To get a good center, there's a light on the side of the PCB that blinks, tell me not to move the heli while it 'finds it center'. You could easily do the same thing I'm sure, don't move it for X seconds after powering up, or hitting a button or something.
And a PIC16F88 @ 8mhz (2 MIPS) would probably get you started and in the ball park, but I don't see it accomplishing anything you'd be totally amazed at. Once you get a good basic project working, I'd suggest switching over to a PIC18F1320 (or something similar) and going as fast as you can with it (40mhz), to get some really kickin' results.
Have you had a look at the ADXL330 (www.sparkfun.com and other sites, same part used in the WiiMote)? X,Y,Z outputs, basically the same thing you've got, but better, and a lot more documentation. And it's relatively cheap.
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