About "grabbing hair in the air" (I like your expression)...
I always manage to pop an arm hair here and there, above skin level, after the D6E, but only if I end with extremely light laps. (A fumbled version of the HHT -slightly drawing the hair across the edge- works too).
BUT: after the Belgian Blue, I always loose both abilities. I find it imperative, though, to use a very light slurry, 'cause a too dense slurry tends to decrease the sharpness of the razor. Maybe too much into detail, but I've noticed if the razor still produces a soft ringing sound, as the hair is dragged across the edge, I'm still good to go. (It's a crude version of playing violin) If not, I overdid it on the slurry, and it always shows up in the final keenness after the coticule.

After the coticule, if I'm still on top of things, I can manage to do a "bearable" HHT again, which turns into a clean HHT after stropping 70 laps on clean leather.

There's a few other tricks I use, depending on the results of this basic progression, but I don't think this post is served by information overload...

Best regards,
Bart.