Excellent description, thanks! Yeah, I fed elevator too soon. Reading your technique, I think I would have been able to maintain more forward momentum had I increased collective before feeding elevator. My loop was more like a yellow ribbon shape than a circle. I did feed some negative pitch near the top. I don't think I came back to positive pitch nearly soon enough. You're right ... given a smooth arc, there should be no reason to goose the pitch at the end. I just needed to, in this case, to save it!