On most of my 3D planes I just ease up on the controls and that allows me to pull out of a lot of stuff. If you checkout my video of my Ultimate you can see that rollers running with the wind make it easy to loose altitude.

You always want a good power reserve regardless of what type of plane you fly, but for 3D this is really important.

Most of what I fly is 33% and up so there are a lot of things which are different.

FWIW when I had a Saito 180 I ran it on 30% heli fuel and I didnt have a delay in throttle response.

I do some decent rollers in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKApCe7jS7o

You can see how the wind will affect even the big planes. For harriers and hovering it can help you. When you get good at rollers you can either come down in rolling harrier elevators or gain altitude.

Some planes will flat spin better than others. My Edge I had would do the most sick and perfect flat spins. The Extra's and yak's seem to like inverted flat spins more than upright.