Prouty's repeated "for reasons I don't understand" in that R&W article is both amusing and enlightening. If the acknowledged guru of aerodynamics doesn't understand something, how are we mere mortals going to make heads or tails of it?
My own opinion is that the airflow interaction between the main and tail rotors is so chaotic as to be completely unpredictable in an absolute sense for every phase of flight every time. Witness Prouty's report of the Cobra performing a maneuver that the Apache could not (if I'm reading that passage correctly - it was worded strangely).
I have had a few pilots of Bells tell me that they prefer to land with right crosswinds as opposed to left because of their fear of LTE. They base this on the three wind diagrams "Umm...lifting" posted above in his post. I think it's funny. If you look at the first and third diagram in that post and sure enough, looks like left cross-winds can be dangerous!
But looking more closely, the real "danger" comes at wind speeds of above ten knots. I don't know about the rest of you, but in my experience with the 206, weathercock stability trumps tail rotor power. With a 10- or 15-knot left crosswind, the pilot may find himself with substantial right pedal applied. No way is the nose going to come around further to the right - at least, not until you get into a situation like Diagram #2 (which I don't think is *quite* that wide, but oh well). With a direct left crosswind, you don't have to worry about a spinning-wildly, out-of-control LTE situation. Keep full left pedal in and it probably wouldn't even go around one full turn, settling down into the wind. Still, it "concerns" a lot of pilots I've spoken with because of those dang diagrams.
If those diagrams are true, they're true for all helicopters, not just 206's.
For sure, left crosswinds in Bells and such make you work harder, dancing on the pedals as the t/r momentarily goes in and out of vortex ring state. The BO105 is particularly awful in this regard, and its t/r is way up high! Seems to me that in these conditions the airflow into the t/r is "confused" (would Prouty approve of that aerodynamical term?).
And finally, let me admit that all of my 206 experience (and I've got quite a bit) is at sea level or close to it. I've flown 206's with big and little tail rotors, and cannot recall a specific instance when I ran out of left pedal (touched the stop). It may have happened (the memory goes with age), but it was evidently a non-event. I've never spun, never had that edge-of-the-cliff feeling of impending disaster. Perhaps the JR suffers more at high altitudes. But all of these sky-is-falling people who condemn the 206 and claim that it has a "weak" or "insufficient" tail rotor must either never have flown one or are doing stranger things than this charter line dog has been doing for the last 25 years.
(Nick is quite vocal in his criticisms of the 206. He has, what, only about 6-or-7,000 r/w hours total? And I wonder how much of that time is actually in 206's? My logbook shows 6,600 hours of 206 time alone, increasing every day. Not that that makes me a Prouty - only that I have a lot of make/model time and I haven't died in an LTE accident. Yet. For reasons I don't understand.)
And finally, let me talk about the FH1100: Pilot friend of mine and I were out in one recently in a "fairly strong" wind (15-20 knots) and we could do nothing but hover into the wind. No left, no right, no nothing but straight or nearly so. Admittedly, with its Huey-like tailboom and fin the 1100 has more weathercock stability than a 206. Even so, I was surprised that we could not bring the nose around to the right without getting to full right pedal before getting much past 45 degrees. Odd.