I just learned to fly helis last year and am now into forward flight and will try looping next time the weather turns good.

I went the way of learning with the heading hold on, and only started to fly with it off after I was comfortable in the hover etc. Having the HH help control the tail for me, let me focus more on the other controls. Then once I was flying without thinking about it, I started to turn off the HH. This allowed me to focus a bit more on one or two controls at a time.

just my .02 cents.

Dean