I found this old thread in a search on gyroscopic precession. Regarding the first persons question, I see how it is not necessary to index the tilting hinge 90 degrees from the intended direction because from the way I understand it you are not tilting the rotating disk, you are causing it to try to tilt itself.

However, just to make sure I fully understand: Say you had a DC gyro and instead of rotor blades you had a solid disk of aluminum mounted instead, spinning ccw at 500 rpm. The autogyro is sitting in a swimming pool on floats. If you tried to tilt the head to the right suddenly, the precession would cause the nose to dip into the water. Correct?