I have also tried to develop Fomapan R as negative some years ago. I used dichromate bleach as first step, then BW developer and fixer. Result was negative, but low density, grainy and of low resolution, too. Seems like the bleach partially destroyed the latent image. It may be that the small grains of latent image are eaten by the bleacher and only big ones remain.Hope I don't offend but the negatives look *ultra* grainy. Is this how they will always turn out with this process?
When I've used the Fomopan development kit, the grain and gamma was very pleasing.
Ian
On the other hand, permangate bleach, reportedly used by studiocarter, destroyed latent image entirely for me. It's very aggressive soup, it even dissolves gelatine emulsion, I don't like it.
But I will give a try ferricyanide bleach, mentioned here, it sounds promising.