Control column or yoke
Hi Jan,
Basically, nowadays in club aircraft it's horses for courses. The control column does tend to have fewer linkages and is definitely more direct and more sensitive, so it's much better for aerobatics. It's also easier with a stick on the landing approach when you have one hand on the throttle. The yoke is better on long journeys as you can hold it with both hands and the weight of one hand balances the other.
You need to look at the history of these features. In the early days of flight, aircraft were small and light and had control columns. Then with the introduction of larger, heavier, longer-ranged aircraft the control wheel was introduced. This was partly for reasons of comfort over long trips, but mainly because especially before the days of power-operated or power or servo-assisted controls big aeroplanes were very heavy on the controls and the wheel gave more leverage. In later years, the wheel gradually became abbreviated into a yoke.
This is probably why very, very few fighters have been fitted with yokes. I can only think of one that definitely had a yoke; the Lockheed Lightning, but that was a long-range, escort fighter intended to accompany the bombers. (I have a feint recollection that the Beaufighter, or some other British twin-engine fighter, may have had one, but I'm not sure; anybody know)?
Piper and Cessna began fitting yokes, I think, during the thirties. These were obviously preferable for the long legs a private pilot can fly over that huge country.
I remember flying a new Piper Colt in about 1964, that not only had a yoke, my first experience of this device, but also a hand-held microphone for radio transmission, held in a clip on the instrument panel, and a large loudspeaker, inches in diameter, in the rear wall of the cockpit for radio reception.
The reason for this arrangement seems to be explained by an article I read in about 1965 in 'Flying' magazine. This article was written by an American lady commercial pilot/instructor who had been taken on to be the sales pilot in a US Piper or Cessna dealership. The terms of her employment specified that at all times when at work she must be wearing both earings and a skirt, (obviously among other things). I think they allowed her to wear flat heels.
Clearly, this was to demonstrate that with a yoke a woman can fly smartly dressed, (which in those days would mean in a skirt) and with the hand mike and loudspeaker, she didn't even have to wear a headset (that might snag her earings). How the world has changed.
Broomstick.