How much can you move a heli before flight on flybarless?

[scallybert]

As long as the swash has returned to level centre as you spool up you'll be fine.

Quite. I'm surprised no-one else has said this.

If the gyro thinks the heli is at 45 degrees to how it ought to be (more obvious with the tail), this won't be good.

The various gyro systems tend to decay to taking the current orientation as the desired position (you can see this with the tail blades [but V-Bars used not to] - turn (yaw) the heli through 90 degrees when you're holding it, and watch the tail pitch react, then decay).

How fast (or possibly not at all) this decay happens, may be programmable or vary across FBLs.

It's a very good idea to have the swash level & tail pitch sensible before you spool up.

[AcidDrink]

I carry the heli to the flight line. On my cgy750 I switch it to rate mode for a second to level the swash, just in case. On vbar I do nothing, but I do check swash level visually.
Never had a problem with tip overs.