Gordy, I was told it was 6 hours. But that was several years ago and I have never looked at the USFS book on that subject.
What Jim told me on the forward cyclic was for few reasons. One, considering what the worst case scenario is, you are most likely over water. And most likely deeper than you would like to be. 2nd was that it would give him a better view of his touch down area. And 3rd, helps him to keep the helicopter from moving backwards to sideways on touchdown. From what I saw he lowered the nose no more than about 5 degrees. Plus that is the one nice thing about the 212. The rotor disk stores a lot of energy.