Personally I practice a PFL at-least once per month, although EFATOs a bit less often, mostly because my flying over the last few years has mostly been from quite busy airfields where it tends to get in everybody's way. That probably is a poor excuse and perhaps I should practice them more often.
However, I had reason to test my competence recently when I had a loss of power at about 300ft (not a complete failure) taking off into a 10-15 knot headwind. I am not generally a great fan of turnbacks, but with a strong headwind, combined with a reasonable amount of height to play with, and an aeroplane that I know well (100+ hours on the airframe) I called a pan and elected to turn back.
Despite sideslipping using full rudder and enough aileron to keep me on the centreline, it was clear that I was going to go through the far hedge. This was not a happy thought, but a happier thought was that the engine seemed to be behaving again, so I risked going around (keeping fields in gliding distance at all times I hasten to add) then at the suggestion of a very on the ball controller, turned back into the airfield to land on a disused crosswind runway.
(The wind was westerly, so I took off from a westerly runway, tried unsuccessfully to turn back onto a downwind easterly runway, then ended up turning left to land safely on a southerly runway - safely, albeit about on the aeroplane's crosswind limits).
That actually did make a really useful point to me about runway selection - there is at many airports a third option apart from a field or a turnback: that is a (perhaps disused, but who cares!) crosswind runway, requiring a roughly 270 degree heading change, but in a way that keeps you in gliding distance of the airfield throughout. In my "incident" I think although it all ended well, turning left to land crosswind on the northerly runway would have been a better option. But, prior to that I'd never considered it, and thus never briefed it. I do now!
Incidentally Whopity, I think that you may be partly incorrect in your last post. I've come across a lot of turnbacks where the aircraft was destroyed, but I can't think of any where anybody was killed (badly injured yes, killed no). I'm sure that there have been some fatals, but I think that the vast majority of turnbacks have been survivable, if not pretty.
Had my engine stopped completely, I'd have probably hit the far hedge doing about 20mph. The aeroplane would have been destroyed, but I think I'd have lived.
That said, I do agree with your assertion about homebuilts - it's one of the reasons why I think that few homebuilders are the right people to do the early test flying of their own aeroplanes. (I've had I think five engine failures testing homebuilts, although four of them I was able to re-start in the air, and the fifth I was on short finals so didn't bother. My experience of homebuilts is that if the engine is going to fail, it's generally at low speed/low power, not high power - stall testing, attempted spin entry, or a late approach have accounted for all of mine.)
G