Thank you skibo, this is driving me mad, all this first plane to hover, IT'S BEEN DONE.
I also think edible has some good points, that's probably not why they can't do it. It is because piston engines don't produce enough power to pull out of the hover, I saw a figure in the VTOL forum that it needs to be a ttw ratio of about 1-1.12.
But looking at what Sean and greg do, I'm pretty sure they are mad enough, sorry - good enough to go right down to the deck with enough power. Crowd safety doesn't come into it when there a good 200m from them>
I saw him do and I saw him do it.

And I think chuck yeager did it as well or something along the lines of it.

I saw wayne hover, then tilt to the left, then to the right, and then straight up. You can also tell he's hovering by the way the smoke is coming out.