In defense of the 206, I can't recall ever hitting the left pedal stop. But I certainly can vouch that I have done that in other helicopters. It's never a comfortable feeling.
My one and only encounter with "LTE" was in a LongRanger. Up high, photography flight, hovering downwind. Pullling more and more power to hold position, I had "some" left pedal in but didn't sense that I was about to hit the stop and in fact had not. Suddenly...
snap!...around she went. In the happy comfort of retrospect, I guess the vertical fin just blocked off enough of the tail rotor's inflow (or something) that the T/R just couldn't hack it at the high power-setting.
The rotation was so abrupt that I thought I had a tail rotor failure. Alternatively, had I known more (but not enough!) I might have assumed that the tail rotor had "stalled" like the wing of an airplane gives up the ghost. Having all of 1,000 big hours, I was bamboozled and pretty much just along for the ride, thrown sideways against the front seat passenger who was likewise thrown sideways against his door. I uttered an expletive phrase that began, "What the...?" Luckily we had plenty of altitude. I do remember lowering the pitch and banking into the spin. We did fly out of it. I thought to myself, "Don't do THAT again!" And I did not.
Sometime later I read the FAA Advisory Circular on the subject. I was surprised to learn that the tail rotor is *not* stalled during the event, and is still producing thrust. The recommendation was to go to FULL left pedal
and hold it there. In my own experience, I do not remember doing that. I vowed to not make that mistake again. And I wonder how many "LTE" accidents occur because the hapless "low-time" pilots, like me, failed to stuff the pedal all the way in quickly enough because they were already low, down near the trees, concentrating on something outside the aircraft, something other than the theory of tail rotor inflow versus huge, blocking vertical fins.
So now when I'm operating in situations that demand high power and a wind off the tail, I'm very, very careful about yaw rates. And now I know what to expect if it snaps again.
Do I believe that the 206 tail rotor "stops working" and/or will spin "out of control" in an LTE event? No. It will spin until the pinhead at the controls (me) pushes in and holds the left pedal and perhaps reduces the torque if possible until a) the weathervaning tendency takes hold or b) the tail rotor gets a good "bite" again.
I laugh at that LTE Wind Chart that Bell puts out. According to it, you're susceptible to LTE with wind from virtually every quadrant except a tiny slice of area to the front right. Silly me! I didn't realize you could get into LTE with wind off the left. But Bell wants to have ALL their bases covered, I guess. And truthfully, as I've admitted here before, all of my helicopter flight time is at relatively low altitudes - below 5,000 feet. So I cannot comment on the 206's tail rotor performance at altitude. But down here in the thick air, I do chuckle when flying in a 206 with newbies who seem preoccupied with LTE when making an approach with a wind from the left-front. "Heh, go fly a B-model offshore," I tell them. "Offshore, where you'll be making max-gross landings to confined-area drilling rigs and the wind will be nowhere NEAR that little slice of clear area on the LTE chart." You'll be flat-out amazed that 206's aren't spinning out of the sky all over the place and falling into the water.
I kind of agree with headsethair. The phenomenons we ascribe to the main rotor as VRS or SWP can be excited while operating inside the flight envelope. Military OH-58 accidents aside, it seems to me that the number of
civilian accidents attributable to "LTE" are small. I'll accept that, like the main rotor, the tail rotor has some performance limitations too, even considering N. Lappos' contention that this is unacceptable. (Listen to Nick screech on this subject long enough, and you get the impression he wishes that the FAA would just ground the Bell 206, that unsafe P.O.S. and be done with it.) You know, all things considered, for a helicopter that was designed over forty years ago, I believe the JetRanger ain't half bad.
Your mileage may vary
Afternoon Edit: What was I, sleeping? Happened to crack open a 206 AFM today and what to my wondering eyes should appear, but the Critical Wind Azimuth Chart! The "avoid area" is much smaller than my memory lead me to believe: only extending from 050 degrees (relative to the nose) then back around to about 210 degrees. For some reason, I thought it encompassed the entire left side of the a/c. Ah, the failing memory of old age.
Apologies.