Nick and Lu,
I am trying hard to continue to respect the experience each of you has but its getting difficult. Soon I will have to ignore any set of posts that includes you. It would be a loss but lets face it, every subject on here is getting high-jacked.
If I could get a link to this infamous Georgia Tech report I would appreciate it, I was unable to locate it on their web site.
Both Sikorsky and Robinson products have their strengths and weaknesses, lets get past it.
Now on this topic:
I recently had a discussion with the rest of the training dept I work in about the sideward quickstop and how to approach the teaching of it. In our operations the only reason we could see for performing a quickstop is wire (or other obstacle) avoidance. The reason one would be in a position to have to worry about wires would then be because of low altitude, probably due to lousy weather.
The side-stop was recommended by some of us for the simple reason that instead of pointing the nose into a featureless sky, you are maintaining a good ground reference to assist in maintaing a/c control. If hitting the t/r is really a concern, then think about why you are there (low).
And yes, I do know that some jobs require low-level operations.