No Fareastdriver, I don't think anybody would shout you down for that; it was what worked for you guys in that environment and terrain. Plus, in the 1960's you guys probably were flying helicopters that weren't all that fast in the first place (S-58's?)
But as for this discussion, I think we're all operating under some general assumptions. First, I think we're talking about "plain vanilla" engine failures where it just stops with no warning and/or drama. I think we're talking about "normal" flying at between 300' and 1,000' agl over terrain which affords at least some decent forced-landing areas.
Higher than that and it really doesn't matter how you enter the auto as long as you do. Lower than 300' and it probably doesn't matter what you do as long as you put the pitch down, because you're most likely going to land/crash straight ahead regardless of the wind. (And if you're down below 300 feet you by God better be into the wind or have a damn good reason why not.)
"outofwhack" brings up an interesting point. If you're toodling along in your LongRanger in cruise with, say a 3 degree nose down cabin attitude (i.e. 8 degree nose-down disk), you will have to make a nose attitude change of 17 degrees to get the disk up ten degrees to the relative wind. That's a lot of pitch attitude change!
Which is why I sort of respectfully disagree with Eagle86 who, when talking about an engine failure in cruise says:
cruise - lower lever - maintain attitude/airspeed even lower nose to gain best range airspeed...
Yeah well...maybe in a 47 or something. In cruise in a 206 you're already going faster than best-range-auto speed. And again, if you're down around 300-500 feet, you definitely don't want to descend any
more, at least not until you've got a good landing site picked out, bearing in mind that it may be behind you and you have to turn around to find it again (assuming you remember flying over one a second or so ago).
I think that if the engine ever quits "for real" most pilots including myself will take a bit of time to recognize and react to it. During those few, hopefully brief seconds, the aircraft will have already started a descent. As you gather your wits and put the levers/pedals in the right places, you surely want to stop that descent to give yourself some time to start looking for a place to land.
Which is why "aft cyclic first" seems to me the proper technique in the event of an engine failure at any speed above 60.