Sal, looking forward to your build thread. Hope you didn't take any offense, I was just thinking out loud and had my flying skills in mind. With your experience I don't see any problem for flying the IM, whatever balance and stability. What intrigued me most was the unstable setup which renders a free-flight test model useless, and that led to the idea to let a gyro do the elevator work. I just wouldn't like to be a flight controller, that should be a machine which is better at that than any human being, especially since it's in the airplane. And it will even compensate for a less than perfect balance.
Great 163 by the way!
All the best for your build, Burkhard