The effect seen in the video is gone. I'm able to get successful liftoff (without having to hold back elevator) and control, although very very touchy, and with the throttle cutout issues as mentioned previously.
In order to get the frame balanced without the cage, i pretty much have to put the battery hanging off the tail.
EDIT: SUCCESS! IT FLIES!! Finally!!!
It's totally a CG issue at this point and very well may have been this entire time!!!
I can't believe I didn't check that from the start, I am so very sorry to everyone for the frustration. I had the battery mounted directly in the middle on the bottom, forward of the naze, which the frame was already front heavy, so that seems likely why it needed so much reverse elevator to liftoff.
Here's a couple pictures of how I have the battery mounted in order to make it fly stable:
I still need to tune in the throttle, you can see at the start of the video, I take it up out of frame then drop the throttle a little below hover, maybe to 35% throw and it cuts out. I'm wondering if it might be the curve setting on the ESC should be set to low curve instead of off. Or maybe just some Naze tuning will do it.
Again I appreciate all the help getting this up and running, I was beginning to get discouraged with this build.
This is with Angle mode:
I am hoping once I put the cage on top, with a 2200 battery directly overtop the naze, the CG will still be balanced.