I am lucky enough to fly from a very quiet airfield and usually have no other traffic to deal with which can provide a degree of freedom. Bearing in mind the well founded advice to not turn back in the event of an engine failure I experimented a little.
The important thing to remember here is that it was a simulated failure, with just myself onboard and I knew what I was planning to do......very different to an unplanned real emergency when the mind does not necessarily work in the way that you might wish.
The runway is 900m and I had a 20kt wind at 30° off the runway heading giving a 10kt crosswind from the left. I was in my own standard Cessna 172. I carried out a normal takeoff and climbed straight ahead to 700ft before closing the throttle. I immediately lowered the nose to maintained 65kts and turned left with a 30° bank onto the runway recipricol and allowed the wind to push me across the center line and when just short of being abeam the numbers I turned right and landed. I landed on the numbers.....had I turned earlier I could have landed deeper.
This obviously has to be flown accurately, using too much bank or getting too slow will easily see precious height vanish but it was an interesting exercise to try. I have since tried it in different winds and seen two other pilots (one a commercial high skilled light twin stol pilot, the other a 400 hour ppl with next to no stol experience) who both managed it.
As with any manouver practice makes perfect and this was an interesting exercise in seeing what was possible.