The neighbors are certain I am crazy, whether they are
afraid of me or not remains to be seen. The guy across
the street flies RC so he's ok with it.

Yes indirectly, I am using the heli setup to change the pitch of the flybar, which in turn
changes the pitch of the blades. This is what alleviates the control forces
and slows down the response. The short flybar with small paddles has
a slow contolled response to input and the main rotor follows suit, like
a slave servo mechanism. I posted a closeup pic of the setup in another
reply. The swashplate applies cyclic pitch to the flybar, the flybar then precesses
like a rotor would. The flybar is linked to the main rotor and applies cyclic through
the little short links. THe main rotor then follows the flybar. If the main goes too far
or gets gusted around the linkage applies the corrective cyclic to bring the main rotor
back in line with the flybar. Because the flybar is very stable the whole rig is stable. The
main head is therefore very simple semi-rigid rig, with no flapping hinges, delta-three etc.
It only has the teetering bearings to allow the flybar to manage the main rotor cyclic.
Because the head is semi-rigid you get good control authority. Seems to work like a charm.

Pre-spin is by hand flip when taking doing ROG, or no pre-spin
when hand launching (just funny running).

thanks for the questions.