Look, I love it. Best Robinson ever and an astoundingly great machine in its class. One point : there is no type conversion. Yet there are some major differences between the Astro and the Raven. For instance, the Raven has a hydraulics on/off switch above the pistol grip, adjacent to the frequency changer. Not easy to see - and very easy to move without realising it. Also, the hydraulic circuit-breaker doesn't actually operate the hydraulics. It provides power to the system which controls the hydraulics. This gave me an interesting wake-up call recently. The controls (cyclic and collective) went stiff.
I suspected hydraulic failure and reached for the cb. Pulled it - and the hydraulics came back on! Pushed it back and the hydraulics went off again. Then I noticed that the hyd switch was off...... no warning light to tell me that. All this would be solved witha simple type conversion. In the meantime - be aware as you jump from a "manual" Robinson to a "God that's the smoothest thing I ever flew" one.
Do car manufacturers provide switches for turning off power-assist steering? No. But if they did, there'd be a warning light. Why does a Robinson need a hydraulic on/off switch and why, when you have warning lights for everything, is there no hydraulic warning light ?
Can you fly it with hydraulics off ? The answer is yes - I did - close to the ground. But you'd enjoy arm-wrestling a JCB more
