Lately I've been doing flatspins with the trainer I keep around. And yes, they are true flat spins, not normal spins, and not spiral dives. Had to move the CG way back and add a ton of rudder throw, but it works. The entry is also tricky, since the wing doesn't want to stall, any forward airspeed at all and you don't get a spin, you get a mush.

I've had a couple of lawn-mowing saves while doing this, one that was actually an "out of sight" save, where the plane actually dropped in to a valley during the pull out, if I had been closer to the runway, it would have splattered. Turns out that once deep in the flat spin, just releasing the controls results in an exit from the spin 3-4 turns later! [X(]. Lots of fun.

Oh, as for the other acrobatics, moving the CG that far back also greatly reduces the tendancy of the plane to dive when inverted, so inverted flight is better, making the various rolling manevers work better.

Oddly enough, the plane spins inverted quite nicely, but won't do an inverted flat spin at all, at least I've not been able to flatten out an inverted spin yet.