I once had a Qantas captain turn up at the school in which I was instructing and tell me he would like to experience hovering a helicopter.
I explained to him we normally like to do a bit upstairs first before getting close to the ground. He told me he had spent a lot of time flying model helicopters and understanding the principles and aerodynamics of rotary flight.
So, I yielded. First pedals, then collective, then cyclic then all together. From the point where I first gave him control of the pedals only to the point where he had full control of the machine was probably no more than 15 minutes, and his hover was rock solid. During the second half of the lesson we did some landings and takeoffs, and I was just as impressed with him on these as I was on the hover.
I think some people have a greater ability to get into the hand-eye stuff than others. No doubt, his 36 years and 19,000 hours of airline experience helped him understand my verbal instructions better than others, but other fixed wing folks I've taught were not a patch on this bloke.
Now, could he have got in to a machine, worked it out for himself and not broken something? No chance. There were things he had not pre-empted that still needed explaining, and NOBODY is ready for the sensitivity of the controls that first lesson.
GP