RE: To Gyro or not to Gyro?
A gyro on rudder really helps control dutch roll on swept wing aircraft like the F-86, F-100, etc.. My BVM F-86 had one and it really flew very nicely.
Most people I´ve seen who say they need one on the nosewheel steering simply don´t have the steering setup properly in the radio. You cannot use the same rate for takeoff that you need for taxi. Furthermore, the real problems I see are the pilots who simply slam the throttle open fully, release the brakes, and pray the aircraft runs straight.
What I always did with the F-86, was bring the power to about 50%, release brakes, let the airplane start accelerating, and then smoothly bring the power to 100%. I also hold just a little up elevator all through the takeoff roll to help keep the nosewheel a bit light. This is especially important for airplanes like the BVM Bandit, where power application forces more weight onto the nosewheel. This is important enough that BV puts it in the flight instructions in the builder´s manual even.
One can hardly call a gyro cheating when many full scale aircraft had yaw dampers on them (I think the F-100 series even has them).