talkturn :
I thought FR worked for Hughes before he did his own thing.
As for the T/R on the 22 turning advancing blade down, rather than up into the main rotor downwash, my understanding is that it was purely a weight and cost thing. With the main rotor turning anticlockwise, the easiest and lightest thing to do is a normal bevel gear on the main rotor shaft. This would make the T/R shaft turn anticlock when viewed from the rear. Another simple bevel gear in the T/R gearbox means the tail rotor turns in the direction we all know and love on the R22.
Solutions and possible disadvantages ? Extend the T/R drive shaft past the 90 degree final drive shaft, and a simple bevel gear would now make the T/R advancing blade go up into the T/R downwash at the expense of making the T/R gearbox longer and heavier. Similarly putting the T/R on the opposite side of the boom would obstruct the airflow in precisely the direction you want to push it, so you'd have to have larger T/R blades and so on and so on.
Even with the T/R as installed, at 80% NR in an IGE hover at a reasonable density altitude there's plenty of T/R authority to turn against torque, or even to arrest a slow turn with torque ( but not recommended !! ).
As a final comment, I believe FR was working at Hughes on the T/R design for the OH-6, as it suffered from LTE problems in its early life.