Overpitched:
I don't have any argument with your observations or conclusions except to say that I think what you point out makes a discussion of the H/V diagram even more relevant.
Surely if you do a mental run through of an engine failure on every departure part of that discipline would be flying a profile that avoids a combination of speed and height that has been proven to be unsafe ???
Heh- if that were only the case! I did say that I expect the engine to quit on *every* takeoff, but that doesn't mean that I wouldn't sometimes be in a serious bind if it did. Only in a perfect world is every takeoff made over nice, unobstructed, flat areas with lots of places to set it down. Sometimes you just have to grit your teeth, hold your breath and say, "Here we go..." and get into a safe zone as soon as possible.
I am a good pilot- maybe not a great pilot (despite what I may post on silly internet discussion boards). I do not delude myself that I can duplicate all of the techniques that the test pilots demonstrate during certification, even though the graphs and figures and such are supposedly compensated for dimwits such as meself. So I don't get complacent. I don't assume that just because I am *slightly* outside of the shaded area a good autorotation is guaranteed.
It's tempting, when doing repetitive flights, to let things slide a little. With all that open farmland around the airport, one could understand the 47 pilot getting a little complacent. Truth is, he should obviously should have gone for a little more aerospeed than altitude. Or maybe said to himself, "I wonder if it's going to pop and quit on this takeoff?"