After reading this thread and a few other guides, I decided to just go with the training missions initially. First one, no bother at all. 2nd one
My first attempt resulted in me failing to drop out of supercruise at the right point to satisfy the tutorial. After about a dozen attempts and continual fly-bys I decided to give up and go to bed. Had another go this morning and then realised I'd spent the previous evening targeting the wrong place.
So, I'm there nice and easy and then comes docking. Luckily this thread had pointed out the alternate flight controls so I'm feeling confident. Then I spent 10 minutes bouncing off the dock. Line up the chevrons it's says, so I do. Took me a while to realise/remember that I needed to be pointing away from the entrance.
Was it fun? Not sure but it wasn't too frustrating as reading this thread had prepared me a bit. What was a significant improvement over OG Elite was the size of the entrance to the space station. That original design decision to make the slot only as big as your ship so you had to match the strawberry floating rotation was a nightmare and also illogical given ships about 5x bigger than the one you flew came out of the same entrance.]
Haven't broken out the flight stick yet (by that I mean I haven't figured a way to use it without withering glances from my wife and comments about wasting money on peripherals again). Handled nicely with the pad (aside from the gazillion button combinations) so with a stick it should be something special.