Hi Gerard,
Regarding the automatic loading of 'Favorite' voices, have you checked the 'Category' setting on the pop-up window called up by touching 'Menu' on the Voice Selection display?
You can set this to 'Open Only' and then when you open the voice selection display, it will simply open on the page containing the currently selected voice, but will not select a voice.
I suspect that this setting won't apply to the Favorite selection screen, but it might be worth trying.
I agree with you about the inclusion of USER voices (or styles for that mater) as Favorites. Restricting it to Preset is obviously another example of Yamaha doing what is the easiest to for them to implement, rather than what is genuinely useful to users.
Of course you can make your own 'Favorite' function by simply setting up one or more folders on the USER drive or USB, and put your favourite USER voices/styles, along with copies of Presets into it. That way they will be in alphabetical order too, rather than the unhelpful order(?) that they appear in the Preset folders! Although this will involve some wasted space if you copy Presets to a user folder, with the huge amount of available space, this should not really be an issue.
Regards
Ian