Its true, the simulator is the Key. I once got Mark Leseburg (king of rolling maneuvers) to tell me in a forum how he got so good at it. He said at first he just sat with his transmitter in hand and developed muscle memory. Roll right and hold.... left rudder, down elevator, right rudder, up elevator. Do it over and over and over and over until you can sit in front of the TV and do it for 30 minutes without thinking about it.

Then get on the sim and start practicing. At first it will look like crap, you will want to roll with the nose down low and everytime you make a mistake and drop the nose a little the roll rate will pick up and get hard to control.

Usually everyone rolls better one way or the other. I roll better to the right and with the plane traveling from my left to my right. Start in whatever direction is comfortable and its easier for most people to roll out and not in. That is, if your circle is counter clockwise you will roll right, if its clockwise you will roll left. Start out with whats easiest just to get the hang of it.

Once you learn the muscle memory part just start working on it. Left, Down, Right, Up. Watch the plane and feel what the plane is doing. Try to keep the nose up at a 45 degree angle at all times like it has a rod passing in the spinner and out of the rudder. Really focus on keeping that angle constant and dont so much worry about what dierction its going. You need to get the general idea of how to harrier roll before you start steering.

Once you can harrier roll comfortably, you just use the vertical control surface to steer. It sounds hard and by golly it is hard.. BUT eventually your brain figures it out and you can really start to see what the plane is doing. There will come a time after much practice and I am talking maybe months,,, or a YEAR or practing a few times a week or more on the sim and for real, that you will be able to clearly see what the plane is doing and where its going. Once you get to that point you simply correct your timing of elevator and rudder input to steer, use the throttle to control altitude and the ailerons to maintain roll....

Circles are really easy, its going in a straight line that is TOUGH. It took me 3 times as long to figure out how to go in a straight line... Once again, now that I can do it it is easy but it was almost impossible to get the hang of. But once you got it, you got it.

The really funny part, and I bet most guys will agree... once you get really comfortable with rolling harriers and you can steer them where you want, DONT EVER start thinking about what you are doing.. It will totally confuse you... Its just like riding a bike, you are constantly making corrections but dont dare ask HOW you do it... You just do it.

Its really about sheer determination, there are no shortcuts.