There was a good article in Plane & Pilot (i think) a few months back about
making your mind up about these kinds of problems well before you need them.
Especially if your flying from your "home" strip, you should already know
where you'd put it down if you lost the engine and you already have the
go/no go altitude in your brain before you depart. If your below your limit
when the engine quits, you don't second guess yourself, you just push over
to best glide and land straight ahead (or as close to it as possible).

It also mentioned that you should consciously fight the urge to save the
plane or "get back to the runway". The kneejerk reaction is to think that
if we can just get back to there, then everything will be ok.



I have a close friend who was an experienced pilot (IFR rating - 6
years of flying - owned his own plane) and had engine failure on
takeoff and did not make it back to the airport. He was practicing a
short field take off which probably didn't help the situation but
impacted terrain about 1/4 mile short of the runway (he hit power
lines that were right next to this airport). Anyway, he died of
injuries from the crash. The wing sheared during the impact dumping
fuel into the cockpit and started a bad fire but fortunately death
occurred upon impact.

Reports placed him at about 700 ft of altitude when engine failure
occurred but it could have been lower than this value.