Why do you guys insist on talking about the last five feet??? A good auto to a bad spot is preferable to a bad auto to a good spot.
Peter, your story is good, and I'm glad you came out ok, but I could dredge up numerous accident reports where pilots screwed up the last portion of the auto and allowed RRPM to decay, A/S to fall off, and over/undershot the desired landing spot - many being fatal.
Once you roll the throttle back up, the excercise is over. You cannot get any meaningful information about what happens during the flare once the power is back. How do you teach various methods of steepening or lengthening the flare, or the retreival of RRPM during the flare in a power revovery - you don't, peroid.
So you can PROPERLY SIMULATE all the power recoveries you want, but you'll be leaving out a huge amount of information as to what goes on at the end - where it counts. If every engine failure ended up over a road or a nice big field, fine - but they don't, and I've seen the resluts when a flare into a tight LZ in 60ft trees goes wrong.
If you want to believe that power recoveries are teaching you all you need, great, whatever lets you sleep well at night... But there are a great many guys out there who've had the misfortune of experiencing the real thing over lousy terrain who'd disagree with you. I believe that we should all be doing everything possible to stack the odds in our favour, that includes, but is not limited to, training full-ons.
Then again, safey's a great thing until someone points out the $$$ of it...
RH