From one of Ted's posts: "One last comment, David Fitzgerald, who built a couple of his early morphed Imitation/Excitation ships with the circular BCs after his return to competitive stunt following his Air Force tour of duty told me he thought he was less able to precisely control the flight path under low tension maneuvers--the wingover in particular--citing the increased sensitivity around neutral due to the circular crank. Being sort of a neanderthal myself I was never sensitive enough to detect the difference."
It seems to me that the circular BC would be either less sensitive around neutral, or the same in the wingover, since both are essentially at neutral through the straight parts of the WO. That would be comparing a 3.5" conventional BC to a 3.5" radius CBC. Comparing a 3.5" CBC to a 4" conventional BC wouldn't be fair, at least not with the same handle spacing. If you narrow the handle spacing to match the 3.5" CBC, then you'd lose some precision for sure.
Regarding the OH8's, oversize is often caused by flying them upwind (which reduces line tension), by geezer pilots who can't bend their neck/back enough to look straight up. I still intend to try and practice flying them facing downwind after entering from upwind. If the breeze is light enough I have entered the OH8's from downwind and exited upwind, with no apologies. Yes, it's legal.
I believe Ted once wrote that he used to enter from upwind, and turned to face downwind during the OH8's, but changed to facing upwind because that's the way everybody else did it. Apparently, I need to do a lot of dry flying to get used to the concept of doing the OH8 facing downwind, because when I've tried it, I got confused and almost crashed.

Steve