1st things 1st. Can you put the plane into a Harrier (or high alpha) position and drive it around in that position? Can you do controlled elevator drops? If you can do both of these well, then you are ready for some nice controlled hover manuevers. Drop down into your elevator drop, as it slows, get the nose up into the 45 degree angle and keep slowing your momentum forward. As you creep to nearly a stop, slowly bring the nose up using power, not elevator. You want a nice smooth transition for a nice controlled hover. Because you've mastered harrier driving as I like to call it, you are ready for the smooth slight corrections needed to hover. Most people over compensate during a hover, causing the plane to go out of control very quickly.

A lot of people also try to find that sweet spot for the throttle, when in fact, its a constant blipping of the throttle. Once in the hover, Concentrate on keeping the plane from going up! NOT on keeping it from dropping. This sounds backwards, but it changed my world wrapping my head around that. Heres a quick video of some nice hovering I just posted to my youtube channel.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVVayPKbWI0[/youtube]