I should have mentioned that the majority of my own experience teaching EOLs and those I work with has been in R22s. There's a neat part of the Robinson Safety Course presentation which shows the energy of the R22 in HP seconds, so you can see how long the height, the speed and the rotor inertia will keep you up. From memory the latter is less than 5% of the total from 2000ft and 70kt, so not much to play with. I'm sure it's a different story in other machines.
However I've never come across anyone in any machine on my profile who teaches use of collective prior to the levelling the ship, unless to control rrpm. Even rrpm control during the flare is a little moot in a real world (as opposed to training) situation. I've always thought that was a sensible rule because real world EOLs are not marked for artistic impression, only survivability. By keeping the rotational inertia till the very end you give yourself the best shot at the landing.
Now there are plenty of machines I've not flown (including the Gazelle which has a very long tail) so I can only speak from my own experience. But given that caveat, I would say that once you start teaching people to fiddle around with the collective during what is already a busy time, you're opening the door to (more) mistakes.
Last edited by puntosaurus; 27th Nov 2010 at 14:25.