It was tough for me too but after a while I found the groove, the movement that worked for me was up and down, and pretty slow... When I noticed the asteroids were adjusting to my new trajectory, a second or so after the "slide" was over I pushed over into another slide, but the main thing for me was to keep the turn itself slow.
I always liked that best, I found a very profitable merchant run that was very short and could earn me over 15000 in one trip... Add Merchant's guild missions and it's a quick buck nonetheless... I did switch to a Centurion in RF though, the emphasis was more heavy toward fighting then... And as Your friend, I retired back to a Galaxy after Jones was gone...