Well sure, Awblain, we all understand that the energy stored in the unpowered rotor is not limitless. But here's the thing: If you're zooming along at 115 to 120 knots in your 407 or 350 or 119 or whatever, you're well above the speed for a stabilized autorotation. So you need to decelerate to that speed.
There are those who squawk like parrots, "RAWK, MAINTAIN RPM, MAINTAIN RPM! RAWK!!" But they're missing the point. Sure, RPM is important, I get that, I'm not an idiot and neither is Pete Gillies. But that's not all there is to it, right? There is a whole other half to the equation of entering an autorotation.
The "Maintain RPM" squawkers apparently would prefer to decelerate from cruise to best-auto speed while descending for a power-off landing. I, on the other hand, would prefer to do that decelerating in a level (or nearly so) cruise. If I can use the stored energy to buy a couple of those "...few seconds" that you talk about, then all the better! If only the "Mosby" pilot had had those "few seconds" more than the five seconds he ended up with.
I think it's truly laughable - and by that I mean the sheer arrogance of some of the pilots on this board who apparently all think they're better than me. And maybe they are, I don't know. Maybe everybody here is a better pilot than both me and the "Mosby" pilot.
I don't think I'm better than anyone. In fact, I know that overall I'm a pretty "average" helicopter pilot despite having a logbook with just as many hours as some of the more pompous credential-wavers on this forum. I read accident reports and go, "Dang, that could've been me!" I'm 58. I don't have lightning-sharp reflexes and powers of perception (if I ever did). I know that in any given emergency it might very well take me "...a few seconds" (but hopefully no more than two or three) to figure out what's going on and react properly to it.
We talk about a "normal pilot reaction time" of one second...one second? One-thousand-one. There, that was one second. Did you process the engine failure and react to it in time? Probably not. But you know what? Even two seconds is not a whole lot of time either.
I usually fly at a higher altitude than many of my friends...pilots who tell me that they, "...just prefer to fly low," who seem inordinately concerned (bordering on paranoid?) about some catastrophic failure that will require them to be on the ground right-goddam-now!
So when I fly I like to give myself time. You can squawk about rotor rpm all you want, but you're not looking at the complete picture.