Gipsey: You have already confused the abbo's and newbies with your incorrect disc response description (Grenville for one). Crab got to you before I did
Which now means someone like me/crab/RotorIP/SAS/ eta l have to come back on here wasting our time re-iterating what has been siad time and time and time again.
Once more mon amie (and because there is either misunderstanding or confusion with all these suggestions on entering auto):
ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS LOWER COLLECTIVE FIRST - you will never ever go wrong. It is a "slavish" statement. It is a "rote" technique but it is.....wait for it......
TRUE Trust me when I say that in every single alternative view thrown at this thread, be it whatever reason or excuse, there is always an alternative to positioning the cyclic during entry to an auto, there is also time to positioning the cyclic too.
There is NO alternative to selcting down collective and so very little time.
Which brings me onto Dick Sanford. [Hello Dick, we have met professionally - you came and did a safety audit for me on my police air wing many years ago???].
Dick - I'm not 100% certain of this, but I believe you were not military? It is burned into the mind of every single mil pilot in the UK (especially) to be milli seconds away from the collective at any one time. Mil pilots have no truc with anyone who use their hands to wander around the cockpit. (a) there are NO circumstances to leave the collective unattended for more than a couple of seconds and only then to even contemplate taking your hands off the lever is seen as a cardinal sin.
Same goes for cyclic but to a lesser degree. Complex systems in complex cockpits invariably find themselves being manned by two pilots. Less complicated cockpits with one pilot (like the SPIFR EC135) are designed to minimise dextrous demands in the office - I might suggest.