Thanks for the vid. I'd agree with you, Doug Hannon is definitely out of the box, and a straight shooter from what I've seen over the years.
The concept is absolutely solid in my opinion, I don't see it as any kind of gimmick. While I have used spinning reels since I was a kid(cut my teeth on Mitchells in the 60's), it is a problem that occurs for me occasionally. There is no way I'd pull a foot of line off the spool with the drag after each cast, that would simply make a spinning reel far to inefficient. I find this loop generally occurs when you're blitzed by fish and in a hurry casting, I tend to forget to make sure I have a tight line before I start to reel, and of course, I wind up with this problem when I need the reel to work the most. I can understand how the concept of this spool would eliminate that problem, and I am going to be looking for one of these to try out.
Garry