This is a great thread, folks! The passing of lessons learned between us all is reason number 1 through 100 why I think pprune is tops.
We call it a "Murphy" when you can do a critical step improperly, causing a safety hazard.
One of you Robinson drivers might want to email Robinson and report this so they can put it in their newsletter, and also perhaps fix it and sell a mod (such as changing the diameter or shape of one of the pedal tubes so they can't fit the wrong way). At least a color coded stripe on the tube would help; red to red, for example.
I was flying the #2 S-76 prototype on an experimental flight a few years ago, just taxiing out after some maintenance. A little left pedal as we moved forward, some right yaw, so more left pedal, some more right yaw - in about 1/2 a second we were on the left pedal stops, swerving at full yaw rate (maybe 90 degrees per second) to the right! The blades came within a few inches of the power cart, a guy mowing the lawn nearby panicked and let his mowing machine run into a lake, the crew flattened to avoid the whirling blades as they swept by several times. I cut both throttles to stop the wild ride. We left broad black tire streaks in beautiful concentric circles on the parking spot. Best sight I had ever seen was Titus Rich, our big, broad-shouldered Fire Chief standing on top of the crash truck, silver suit unbuttoned, foam nozzle in his hand ready to hose us down!
Turned out that the yaw control cables had been crossed the night before, after maintenance, so left was right and vice versa! Do you think when I do my controls check during run-up, I now note which way the aircraft nods when a bit of control is put in? You bet!
We changed the design of the cables that day, and terminated them so the left cable would not fit in the right slot. Murphy had to look elsewhere from that time on.