Hi Tom!

>>Until now this has worked for me because I can think fast, and it's very easy on the planes<<

Right, right... exactly.

>>This means I will probably have some inexplicable "dumb thumb" crashes where hand/eye coordination failed<<

Right, right... what happens is you're doing awesome, flying way over your head, and it looks perfect... but, then you get scared and your conscience mind tries to take over. That's when the dumb thumb happens. But, you don't have to crash... when your conscience mind takes over... tell it to neutralize the sticks and full power out of there. Do this before your conscience mind has blown it so bad you're pointing at the ground... of course. ;-)

As far as torque realism... in the real world, that is totally plane/engine/prop/condition dependant. When I TR my friend's H9 Edge-540 it will instantly start spinning like a top (way cool). My H9 33% Cap doesn't want to spin at all. I have to drop it and then kick in some high rate aileron with a little burst of power. After that it goes a medium pace which looks pretty attractive. :-)

You are on the right track, and the sims are great for getting the orientation down. Keep on the sim until you can TR while holding a conversation with your spouse and only watching the TR out of the corner of your eye. :-) Really, you want to get to a point where you can keep one TR going indefinitely on the SIM. Keep after it... you'll get it. :-)