I drilled a tiny little hole in the cowl right at the carb and used a piece of old 2-56 rod to manually open and close the choke by pushinh on the butterfly. Worked like a charm. I do the same thing on all side mounted carbs and you can barely see the hole in the cowl

You should not remove anything on the carb. You will get so much slop in the choke eventually that it will not longer close all the way. If you use a type of kill switch be it optical or other then you do not need the choke servo. If you do not have any type of kill then I would use the choke servo as a second way to kill the engine in the air.

In my eyes, having a second way to kill the engine is important but should the engine mount come loose and jam the throttle it could also jam the choke so that's why I use the Smart-Fly optical kill. It's a safety issue with me.

If you were not getting Rf for several flights then all of a sudden you start getting it then something came lose, broke or otherwise went bad. I would be more concerned about the on/off switches than the battery but 6v will give you a bit more servo power but it will use up the battery a bit quicker.