This thread was doing fine until Vessbot asked a simple question "is phase lag not the same as gyroscopic precession". Quite a lot of things went off the rails after that.
I've got a suggestion that, if it's right, may help answer that question and then hopefully bypass some of the controversy that followed. Would it be fair to say that helicopter control phase lag is the sum of all gyroscopic precessions caused by perturbations (forces ?) applied to the rotor ?