Lonewolf:
The energy management concept certainly seems the better framework for teaching about this facet of helicopter flying.
Boy, you hit the nail right on the head here. Instead of robotically lowering the collective at the point of engine failure, it's far more important to be concerned with energy management.
In cruise flight, a helicopter rotor has an enormous amount of energy stored in it. It would be a crime to let it go to waste. Sure, lowering the collective is of paramount importance, but that's not the FIRST thing you should consider doing - because that act will waste precious energy and time. In the first place, it will start a descent. Hey, you might not want to descend right away! Using that stored energy in the rotor to maintain level flight - even for just a few seconds - seems pretty dang important to me.
And you can't just "maintain attitude" either. Most helicopter cruise at a slightly nose-down cabin attitude, and a more pronounced "nose-down" attitude of the disk. So at the point of engine failure the disk *has* to be brought up to level, at least!...OR you're going to descend immediately. With the forward tilt of the mast in modern helicopters, that means the pilot would have to select a positive cabin attitude of around 5 degrees (more in an S-76) just to keep the disk level. But you want to do more than that. You want to get the airflow reversed from "down through the disk" to "upward through the disk." This will...eventually...happen automatically as the helicopter descends and the autorotation stabilizes, but you'll be using up precious altitude to do it...altitude you may not have if you're like many, many helicopter pilots I know who routinely cruise at 1,000' agl or less.
If you are cruising along at 500' agl with the wind behind you when the engine quits in your AS350 and you immediately bottom the pitch
first, I guarantee that you'll probably not be able to get it sorted out and get the ship turned around into the wind in time for a landing. You'll probably just land straight ahead. If you do it right, you might
not land at a 40 degree nose-down attitude. But if you insist that lowering the collective first is the proper way to enter an auto (especially in an AS350) you just might.