I was trained on the Whirlwind 10 (I hated those throat mikes). We also went to 10,000 feet for that "demo". We wore parachutes. The reason was that if the aircraft went on fire at that nose-bleed height, we might burn to a crisp before completing an autorotation to earth.
As a good (i.e. usually scared) student I pre-read the parachute abandonment drills in the FRCs, which required the pilot to apply the control frictions, fully open the cockpit window, unstrap and sit on the window sill. Then to roll out of the aircraft backwards and at the same time kicking the cyclic to the left.
All quite exciting!
Even more exciting was the note below which went along the lines of:
"WARNING!" Objects jettisoned from the aircraft in autorotation may go up through the main rotor disc".
Er - that might be me, then....
