Hi all,
hydraulics:
The Robinson hydraulics are absolutely the nicest out there!
Reason: If you should ever have a hydraulic failure your emergency procedure is: Just keep flying the helo! No switches, no breakers!
Eventually you're getting really tired if you don't settle into the kind of neutral around 55-65 kts and about 22" max, but the idea is to be able to fly to a decent spot and land, not keep operating for hours on end.
The hydraulic switch has only one reason: To be able to switch off hydraulics for training.
It is a "little different" to fly without hydraulics, so you need a way to practise.
The way to switch on/off hydraulics in
any helo is to "unload" your controls - try not to excert
ANY force on
ANY of the controls - OFF. After that you will certainly feel some need to handle the machine!!
Now to get the hydr. back on: same story - try to have no force on any of the controls at all, even if you have to slow down a bit, lower the collective, etc., when you feel that you only have 2 fingers on each control, not excerting any force - ON! ....and you should not feel anything but the cylic stop kicking. After that back to business as usual!
The danger in playing with hydr. ON/OFF is when you are actually "working" hard without them: Normally you need next to nothing to move the controls. Without hydr. it is some serious pounds you need - to stir the stick.
If you switch ON while excerting these pounds you might kick the stick to the stops in short order. It takes a lot of concentration to avoid any big excursion while switching ON under a load.
It is about impossible to avoid a small/medium excursion!
So again, try to fly (NEARLY....) hands off, while switching ON and you will be fine!
3top,
5K+ in 44(hydr. and electric)