Originally Posted by
tqmatch
From both an engineering point of view and piloting, the Hyd system is simple and robust, and from most of the reports I've managed to locate, a high proportion of the hyd related incidents are training related...
With the exception that the hydraulics are a low pressure system that can be overridden by flight loads, powered by a belt that was susceptible to breakage, switches confusing labelled HYD TEST, updated to ACCU TEST, which on several occasions being mistakenly confused for the landing light switch, but now incorporating a guard, initially and ridiculously bi-stable but finally mono-stable switch, having another switch labeled HYD CUTOFF but variously named something else throughout the RFM, the same switch having an alternate function under a dual-hydraulic configuration, a caution panel with a single annunciator for both systems, later modified to individual annunciators and a system that allowed depressurizing the tail servo and yaw load compensator without a warning in the cockpit...
I find it difficult to call the hydraulics anything but a human factors nightmare.