It is very important to keep hand on the collective when you flick the hyd switch , it will often jump out of the lock down and you will get airborne. One was written off here only about a year ago just like that.
On the note of "out of date" training i agree with you that a lot of the modern machinery is so reliable some emergencies are really not worth practicing. Hovvering without hydraulics has never been required, in fact i think it says in manual NOT to do it , so really it is just a party trick.
