Here's another piece of advice. Learn to harrier before you learn to hover. When your plane falls out of the hover you won't have to go from 0 airspeed all the way to flying on the wing to recover. Things would have been easier for me if someone had told me that. I learned to hover first. I could hover for nearly a year before I felt that I was actually getting anywhere with 3D. I finally felt like I was getting things figured out when I got harriers down.

Work on upright and inverted harriers and high alpha knife edge. When you can control the plane in any attitude at any speed from full to zero you'll be way ahead of the guys who can only fly around and pop into a hover, then fly away again when it falls apart.