Your riding habbits seem simmillar to mine although my wife and I regularly take off on all day rides on the weekends and we do take several multi-day trips during the season.
1. do you NEED them? probably not a NEED but any increase of airflow across the engine is good in my opinion. I am convinced they are worthwhile expenditure based on my experience with them - the 11.5 has the "limp" mode and since I installed these it has not activated where before the install it would activate quite often on the daylong trips in the summer.
2. I can't even hear them at all when running down the road, and even at a complete stop I can only tell they kick on by feeling the air moving and hitting my right knee - one drawback is if it's REALLY hot out I have to move my leg out of the way at a stoplight because the air coming away from the engine is HOT which tells me the fans are doing their job.
3. in a word, no
4. see number two - if it's above 90* degrees out you will feel the hot air at a stop - NOT underway. If you use the thermal switch(which I recommend) you will get lots of comments, looks and questions as they cycle off/on after you park, with everyone wanting to know where you got them. I keep a few of Jason's buisiness cards in the toupak
5. see my reply #13 in this thread - the Wards T'stat works well based om my obervations.
Just currious why not use the chrome bridges? I understand the finned ones would allow more air movement but the fans would still circulate the air around the rest of the cylinder head with the chrome ones on and I don't think they would interfere with the installation of the thermal switch, but I've been wrong before....