E86
The tale of the AS350 selection was a story I heard at 5 in the early 80's and also from guys in the fighter world at willitown.
And true the AS350 was a good trainer, if too easy to fly, when pilots going onto the Huey and Kiowa had to relearn to fly 2 bladed/underpowered machines, I always believed pilots who learned on the B model then went to H models then Blackhawks etc had much less difficulty flying and flew the aircraft better (not the auto pilot) than pilots who went from AS350 to Blackhawk then the Huey's or 206's.