been practicing the split S for a few weeks in the sim and then taking it outside. in the sim it feels fine, i roll inverted, wait a beat, then pull back on the elevator and it carves around. clean enough. but outside on my actual quad (5inch, F7 stack, fairly standard tune) something weird happens right at the bottom of the arc where the nose kind of... hesitates? or wobbles? hard to describe. its not a crash-level thing but it looks sloppy in the footage and i can feel it in the sticks too.

my first thought was it's a tune issue but someone at my local field said it might be more of a throttle management thing, like im not feeding in enough mid-maneuver. i honestly dont fully understand the relationship between throttle and maintaining a clean arc through a split S. any thoughts from people who've actually drilled this stuff

yeah that wobble at the bottom is almost definitely throttle. in a split S you're losing altitude through the whole pull so by the time you hit the bottom of the arc you need to be adding throttle to maintain the arc shape and then carry into the exit. if you're keeping throttle low or neutral the quad sort of falls through the bottom instead of carving it and that's where you get that mushy hesitation. think of the throttle input as kind of supporting the turn from underneath if that makes sense. takes a while to get the timing right, it's not a huge input but it needs to be there.

could also be a tiny bit of prop wash if you're not fully inverted before you start the pull but that usually feels more violent than what you're describing

i had something similar and spent like two weeks convinced it was my PIDs, reflashed betaflight three times, nothing. turned out i was initiating the pull too early, before i was fully rolled over, so the quad was kind of fighting itself trying to pitch and still finish the roll at the same time. not saying thats definitely your issue but worth checking your roll timing in DVR footage because it can be hard to feel in the moment