I find that impossible to believe. Hawkeye0001, how long were you established in VRS for, and what was your ROD when you initiated the recovery action using this technique?
Starting into VRS at 1,500' AGL we let it develop until we hit a descent rate between 800 and 1,100ft / min, started recovery at approx. 1,200' AGL and were able to arrest the descent by about 1,150' AGL give or take some 20ft.
Perhaps your definition of "fully developed VRS" may not be correct? I don't want anyone thinking they can recover from this condition in 50 ft, because in my humble opinion, that isn't possible.
Perhaps my definition is not correct, I'm sure that with a 2,000ft/min descent rate (if that is the definition of "fully developed" we go by) you are right in that the 50' quoted are definitely not manageable. But 1,100ft/min is bad enough in my book that you should have begun your recovery a long time before you even got to that point.
And the point is that in direct comparison to the method of lowering collective, accelerating forward, hit ETL, and then raising collective to climb out the Vuichard technique consistently saved us approximately 1/2 to 2/3 of the way on side-by-side comparision throughout 6 attempts of using each method.