Teaching autos, and teaching flying in general, has been much on my mind lately, and I've come up with some new (to me) ideas, which is unfortunate, as I'm no longer a flight instructor (and this is farming club).
In all of the auto training I received (with a few exceptions --mostly my instructor trying the stuff that he vaguely remembered his instructor showing him once) the focus was always the attempt to master the straight in, "by the book" auto to a power recovery.
As this thread (not to mention the BACKWARDS AUTO thread) indicates, the book has to be thrown out in order for the autorotation to get you from where the power went away to the place you want to walk away from.
Toward the end of my stint as an instructor, I began teaching my primary students much more dynamic autos, (i.e. zero speed, 180, 360, and combinations of these) not only were most students capable of handling the more dynamic "glide" portion, but the made huge gains in their ability to actually hit their spot... I was blown away when a pre-private student, who entered WAY too late, threw down a couple of crankin' turns, managed the Nr (in an R22) and came to a hover ON the spot (my only input was to tell him to start breathing again).
My point in all of this rambling is that I think that students should be exposed to this sort of flying much earlier than is the norm at the schools I've been attended/worked for. Obviously the straight glide, flare and recovery are requisite skills, but once those are survivable, we instructors should teach more free form autos.
My progression would probably go something like this...
*To teach glide skills (Nr/airspeed in an r22 seems to be the biggest hurdle) - enter a auto at 3,000' agl or so, and allow the student to use one control at a time and observe the helicopters response. A sportier version for the next flight is to make the student keep Nr pegged in the green with the cyclic, while you try to move it into the yellow with the collective, and vice versa.
*Once the student can fly a decent glide, introduce the flare / recovery
*As soon as you're not having to use any heroic action to keep the overspeed from happening, go back up to 3,000' and enter a zero speed auto. (note: this will FREAK OUT any student who has only done straight in autos, and their brain will lock up / luckily my hypothetical student has already seen lots of airspeed changes in the glide training) Now, do a pedal turn and decide on a touchdown point... and maneuver to get there.
*Repeat as necessary (a lot, and what fun)
I developed these tricks in trying to improve the autos, and forced landings of my students, after the hundredth straight-in went wrong again. What I haven't had a chance to do yet is actually use a progression like this to a student new to autos.
As I might be an instructor again someday, I'd be interested in hearing more stories about how you were taught, or how you teach.
Sorry for rambling ... HP