sps
My instructor had a few thousand hours in R22's and some of the things demonstrated to me were, looking back, unbelievable really.
I had an aversion to autos for the reason stated above. Every time he said "lets do some autos" I just wanted to go home.
I flew in the US for a spell and when I was doing my check flight with the instructor, I did the auto to the ground. He nearly s**t himself and informed me they didn't do them to the ground in training over there. I later found out he was a fixed wing instructor who had just converted to a rotary instructor and had 60 hours in helos!!!
Anyway, if I demonstrate an auto as an AFI I can only do them to a recover to the hover anyway. I personally don't see the point of going to the ground because the important part of an auto is an entry. If the student masters the initial entry, control all the way down, and knows the drill, then he has every chance of saving himself.
We all have our own ideas on this I guess.
I learned to fly using the R22 HP without a governor, and , having the lower tail, was great fun drawing lines on grass strips with the stinger!!!!!!
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"Practice Autorotation- Go, Oh S**T!!!"