100% is Divine!
G'day!
Well, in the end you guys will have to make your own minds up! However, as I have said before, Bell 'strongly recommends' that 412 operators maintain their RRPM at 100% throughout the flight envelope. The particular known problem of excessive head component wear on the 412EP Model in particular during climbs made at 97% RRPM would seem to suggest that the sensible option for all variant operators is to stick with 100% RRPM as a standard for all non-OEI flight phases and to minimize OEI rate of climb for training purposes (not that one needs much help with that!).
Apart from amending your company's maintenance and flight test procedures to retune your aircraft's FRAM dampers to 100% for the cruise/Vne segment of the vibro (part of the vibro is obviously still done at 97% to ensure that nothing shakes itself to bits during OEI ops!) and adding a decal on the instrument panel to indicate this change (and educating your staff that not cruising at 97% is in their best interests), there seems little to be gained from retaining the old 204/205/212/214B twin-blade cruise RRPM setting.
Besides the fact that fuel saving with the composite blades on the 412 is marginal/minimal at 97% as opposed to the normal 100%NR, if your company's engineers don't strictly 'time' your beep trim actuators, you might/will undoubtedly find that even the most fleeting operation of an over-excitable 'beep' actator [especially when torque is already at or near the 'top of the green'] might lead to accidental/inadvertent overtorquing of the main rotor (>105 KIAS). Particularly when the beep is used to restore 100%NR from a cruise setting of 97%NR. This 'beeping up' can lead to a nasty, if not positively savage, degree of rapid mast torque fluctuation in EP's that do have such a 2 to 5 second full-range beep timing (Bell recommends 8 to 11 seconds, I believe, - like the 205/212). In some companies, the beep actuator timings on their fleet aircraft are all different! Someone getting out of a sedentary SP therefore and straight into a 'hyper' EP might easily ruin their whole day/career in a moment of tired inattention at the end of an 11-hour day! Not worth it in my humble opinion!
In the end, choice of cruise NR setting is still left up to the individual operator, but one suspects that by 'advising' customers to operate their EPs (and therefore their whole 412 fleet for sensible standardisation) in this manner, Bell have covered their liability 'Six' and will not entertain any prospective cries of premature or excessive wear, or other inexplicable damage to rotating components from customers who have not complied with their 'advice'! Having seen such components removed from a new EP with less that 100 hours on the clock, I am quite convinced that maintaining a steady 100% NR throughout the normal operating envelope is the most sensible way to go!
I hope that this post may help you decide likewise!