I'm ridiculously proud of myself tonight. I've been practicing over a month, and haven't been able to hit the tanker except twice. Tonight I hit the tanker once, disconnected, hit it again, disconnected and hit the tanker, and then, my third flight tonight, I stabbed the basked 3 times with the F-14B after I not only adjusted my curves on my stick (virpil mongoose with a 150 cm curve extension and 7.5 cm straight extension, with alpha constellation stick) but I adjusted the curves on the throttle. That made controlling the throttle so much easier, and made it so much easier to slowly approach the tanker with more speed control. I don't know why I didn't think about adjusting the throttle curves before (also virpil).

Now I just have to practice staying connected and flying form on the tanker!