grity, about that right hand left hand thing you mentioned ...
Ten years ago, I was made aware of the risks of carpal tunnel syndrome.
I use computers a lot.
I am right handed.
I chose to begin to use my mouse left handed. (Still do)
It took very little time to adapt to left hand.
I had decided to play a favorite computer game (about eleven years ago) that I used to play right handed, left handed. It was very mouse intensive. (For those interested, it was a dungeon crawl called Diablo, not a flight sim) I found that while I initially was a bit clumsy, it wasn't long before I was able to run the little computer animation around the screen and activate mouse button commands with little problem.
Due to the set up of power and stick on most planes I flew, I was never able to try and teach my left hand how to fly that way. I did however, get to be good at gently flying with my left hand while writing things down on my knee board (right handed) very early in my flying career.
Put another way, with enough practice, left handed flying seems to be a teachable skill ... but you need to practice it. How much time does one get to do that? I've yet to see any of the SS pilots complain about having to fly left handed on the stick. Is this really a problem? (I taught a number of left handed people how to fly, in the RH stick LH power set up, and they seemed to do just fine). I doubt very much that PNF not taking the controls sooner had anything to do with "I don't fly very well with my left hand" concerns.
PS: I broke my right hand in 2004, punching something (no, not someone). I still had to go to work and type reports. So, I did, with just my left hand, for a few weeks. It didn't take that long to adapt, but it was slower.
Conlcusion? Adaptability seems to me the rule, not the exception.
PS#2: JD-EE.
Helicopter pilots who initially flew the V-22 reported some non-intuitive monkey skill issues with the flight controls of that aircraft. Had a long talk on that score some years ago with a test pilot who had flown with me in another squadron. Bottom line, took a bit of getting used to, but adaptation wasn't major. You can probably do a search for the V-22's teething problems, and maybe using "ergonimics" or "flight control differences" search terms to find some of the articles written about this a couple of decades ago. Might answer your question.
The test pilots at Patuxent River and the Marines in New River did revise twice, at least, the proposed training pipeline mix of rotary wing and fixed wing (from initial training) for their prospective Osprey pilots. The multi-engine training balance was increased on one of those reviews, as they felt the helicopter bit was over emphasized.
I am not sure what they have done since, been some years since I was (tangentially) involved with such programs.
Also worth noting:
The initial flying in a helicopter, if one began in fixed wing, could be confusing since power forward, push with left hand, in a plane is the same as power reduction, push with left hand, in a helicopter.
Howerver, you usually translate into helicopters in a VFR training environment where pull is up and push is down with the left hand. That, and being taught a collective isn't a throttle, doesn't take long to adapt to.
By the time you are in flight above translational lift, or in instrument flight regimes, you have already learned what the push or pull does, and the confusion does not arise. If it had ever been present,,and remained, the instructor would probably suggest you go back to flying fixed wing.
