Hi "Falcon", Sorry I forgot while I was researching all that stuff again that you had an FEJ and not another JL F-35A. Anyway the CG locations are likely close as the moments shouldn't change that much unless they put the gear in a different spot which is quite easy for FEJ to do! I am retrofitting an FEJ F-14 now to make it airworthy (read HEAVY as Hell!), and they do some very strange things at that company!
I heard the Xicoy CG transducers are having some QC issues, but mine seem fine with an accurate weight on them. They do drift over time in the powered on state though. A pain in the butt but still usable. That being said, you could just use an HD kitchen scale to check the lateral weight as 2 Lbs is pretty far off even for FEJ's wings. You don't even need to lift the opposite side unless you really need to record the weights for your file, as the 2 lbs is going to show up big time if it is really that different.
My control surface throws are HUGE, and I did exactly what you are doing on a 3 position rate switch. Eventually I move the rates closer to a central position as more flights are done, such that I end up with just using a mid rate unless the bird needs a touch more for landing. My experience with the F-35A is that it is a real puppy to fly and land, other than the times the gear are transitioning of course. I do find it is a tad less stable ('skitterish') when the gear are down and the forward doors are closed too though, so I leave the roll gyro on all the time the gear are down. I do think it could maybe even benefit from an additional gyro on the yaw axis too, but my style of flying is such that yaw rarely comes into play other than in aerobatics and ground handling...wrong I know but its the way I was taught, oh so many, years ago!
On the first flight I left the gear down until I was at altitude after the turn out from takeoff heading downwind since I had been warned about the roll axis instability. I was carrying too much speed so the cycle was incomplete, leaving the nose gear hanging out a tad. It was uneventful to the flight characteristics though. I slowed and cycled again upwind and the gear tucked away nicely. It was very noticeably roll unstable though as I didn't have the gyro engaged at the time, wanting to see for myself what it would be correcting. I immediately hit the gyro switch to mid rate after the gear was up, and noted it didn't need any stablization at that point though. So hence the gyro attached to the gear switch in my case. It didn't seem to want to tuck over and fall out of the sky though, but it does get your attention pretty quickly.
I moved my gear switch a year ago when I went to using a tray for my Tx. STUPID me forgot to move the gyro to the new gear switch!!! I ended up doing a no gyro landing on the F-35A's sixth flight as I wasn't mentally present enough (while fighting the aileron stick) to recall why the plane could be rocking around so badly. That being said I scraped a wing tip, which is a tad difficult to do on a 35 by the way! So not really much damage other than my pride and some grey paint. I mention this so you get a sense that it is not an impossible situation to land without a roll gyro. If you ever get into this situation please remember that smaller aileron inputs are better as roll PIO is a real danger as you begin to chase the plane's rolling. It became that I was simply rocking the plane from the stick to prevent the plane rolling itself. Had I remembered that the rudder rates were now where the gear used to be I could have gone to high rate rudders and had the gyro engaged! More pride shot! Anyway I hope your maiden goes as well as mine!
Enjoy,
Len