Wow, I cant thank you all of you enough for making this thread. I have the same problem as the original poster and I have been struggling with it for weeks. Today after all of the pointers in this thread for some reason it all just came to me.

Today I went on G3 and changed my pilots’ position to the middle of the airstrip maybe 100ft directly in front of the plane. And I just practiced hovering from this angle for a good hour. And now I think I have it, my transitions are a little sloppy but this is really going to help me.

Setting up your flight sim like I did may be a helpful way practice this issue. When I crash and restart I don’t have any other option but bringing the plane into a hover facing the belly. And from this angle it’s easy to move the plane past the pilot to practice transitions.