are you allowed to do that on your IR? Or is it another case of automation-dependence degrading basic flying skills - I can auto couple the ILS all day long but it doesn't make for better piloting skills - remember I am in the business of training pilots, not preparing systems monitors to chauffeur passengers.
I fully agree that pilots need to fully understand their AP systems and select the appropriate modes when desired but to completely rely on automation all the time is to pretend you don't get skill fade or that you are an aviation God who just never gets it wrong.
If living in the Dark Ages means managing automation AND still being able to do it all manually then that's where I will stay thanks.
You aren't allowed to do it on your initial IR because it's not type specific. However you are of course allowed to do it on recurrent training/testing for eg a 225 because that is how the aircraft is normally flown. You need to get away from this ludicrous idea that using the automation is somehow cheating / not doing it properly. I can assure you that there are just as many ways to cock up an overlay approach as there are for a manually flown one, they are just different cockups. One should concentrate training on ensuring that the normal way of operating is covered most, with the somewhat esoteric reasons to fly it manually covered just enough to get by.
That said of course you can get the best of both worlds by starting out with an overlay approach and then eg failing the FMS so they have to revert to "manual" ie HDG, IAS and VS/ALT.A. Well that's pretty manual as far as I'm concerned! Of course they get their revenge on you by electing to go-around whilst they sort it out, so you then run out of Sim time!
Anyway it is interesting to note that you are always looking for ways and reasons to fly it manually, I am the opposite. Until you get the hang of the fact that the automation is the main way to fly these types of helis and therefore the most important thing to get right (and the thing with lots of pitfalls and therefore a big training requirement) you are going to remain part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
It is like insisting that most of the flying is done using the emergency throttles because you don't trust those new fangled governor things.