Your on the right path. Sim time really helps a lot. I'd agree that you need to design or download a better plane. The stock planes in G2 don't hover relistically. I ended up making my own G2 plane. I basically learned to hover on the sim one winter. When the groud thawed, I was plesantly suprised that the real thing wasn't that much different.

The high/low thing is a catch 22. Up high, your're safe, but you can't see what the heck your doing. Down low, you can see what you are doing, but one mistake and your're in the ground. When up high, always practice bailing from hovers by powering up and out. Don't want to learn any bad habits when you move hovers down low.