been flying acro for about a year now and i can do basic stuff fine, throttle management is pretty decent, i can fly a line and actually hit gates most of the time. but my rolls are still kinda sloppy and my split-s almost always drifts to one side which drives me crazy because it should be a clean move and mine looks like im drunk.

im mostly flying a 5inch on betaflight, rates are pretty moderate nothing crazy. i practice in the sim a lot, probably 3-4 hours a week in velocidrone, and i feel like im decent in there but it doesnt fully translate when i go outside which i know is common but still frustrating.

is there something specific people do to drill these moves or is it just reps? feel like there has to be a smarter way than just doing it a thousand times and hoping it clicks. or maybe it really is just reps and i need to hear that lol.

the split-s drift is almost always a rates issue or a throttle cut timing issue. if youre cutting throttle a tiny bit early or late on one side it'll pull the nose off axis. try recording your stick inputs on the osd and watching it back, youll probably see it immediately. betaflight black box is even better if you can be bothered to dig into it but even just watching your sticks on video tells you a lot.

for rolls specifically, one thing that helped me was just doing slow rolls on a line, like pick a straight feature on the ground and try to roll while keeping the nose tracking exactly on that line the whole time. sounds simple but its harder than it sounds and it forces you to understand what inputs are actually doing what throughout the rotation instead of just yolo'ing through it and hoping it comes out level.

yeah its reps but not mindless reps, thats the difference i think. every time i go out now i pick one thing im working on and i do it until either i get it or the battery dies, then i think about what went wrong before i plug in the next pack. just flying around and throwing in moves occasionally doesnt really build muscle memory the same way.

also the sim translation problem never fully goes away for me either. i actually think flying in a bit of wind helps in a weird way because it forces you to be cleaner with your inputs, sloppy rolls get punished more when theres turbulence. might sound backwards but it kind of sped up my progress last year.