Good job on the rotorway research recurry. I only disagree with the flight characteristics portion.
I have some experience with the Rotorway. I worked for the factory as a flight instructor for 4 months, and flew about 165 hrs on it. I left Rotorway (although a great company to work for, not a good product in my opinion) to go instruct in R22s. A lot of people have a lot of bad to say about the R22 but in my opinion it is 10 times the helicopter the rotorway is. The main reason I say this is Flight characteristics.
One of the things I like about an R22 is it's ability to handle x-winds and tailwinds and to fly sideways. You can fly an R22 at 55 knots and do a slow, totally controlled, pirouette, all the while maintaining 55 sideways and backwards pausing to hold any azimuth desired. And you can maintain 90 degree sideward flight up to approx. 65 knots, and enter sideward flight from as high as 85 knots. I know all this because I've done it with a pace helicopter flying along side reading off airspeeds to me. Many turbine helicopters cannot make that claim.
OK, now the rotorway. Well, it is really quite pathetic. At 40 mph, pedal deflection at best will get you 45 degrees yaw. And you feel like you are going to lose control of the aircraft. Hovering in as little as a 10-15 mph tailwind you will hit the aft cyclic stop and the nose will still drop and you will not be able to maintain position over the ground. I realize that this type of maneuver may not be necessary for normal flying so it may not be relavent to some. As long as you know about it you can deal with it.
Another thing is the tail rotor. They use kevlar belts now for the tail drive and they are pretty reliable from my experience and what I've heard. But I still don't like them because even though they don't break, they do slip occasionally resulting in a loss of t/r authority. I experienced it twice, spun around a couple times before recovering. I've never experienced that in an R22.
The engine has half the displacement of a Lycombing like in the R22 or Schweitzer. It still produces nearly the same HP so of course that means it has to turn twice the RPM, 4350 rpm. The result is, it doesn't have the torque to recover from a low RPM situation.
One more thing is the cyclic. An R22 has aprox. 21,22,maybe 23 degrees of total fore aft cyclic travel and laterally I think it has at least 15 degrees. I don't know the exact numbers but I've heard them before and these are pretty close. Another example is a bell 206. They have 20 deg total in both long and lat. Most certified helicopters are in these ranges. But not the rotorway, it has 10 deg total, that means that from center, the cyclic can only go 5 deg in any direction. Nearly half of what most helicopters have. That is why it runs out of cyclic with just wee tailwind. And also why it is less sensitive than an R22. Also it can't land on much of slope.
One more thing that may seem trivial, but it really can be a big deal depending on your situation. R22s have a nice size baggage compartment (considering the size of the R22 it is good size), the rotorway has none.
Oh yeah, c'mon, you have to move a ballast weight to carry a passenger.