Yoke vs. Stick
Hi all,
Yesterday I was working at the flight controls of my company's simulator, for some technical reasons we had to disconnect the installed yoke and replace it temporarily with a side stick.
We evaluated the skills required to fly the simulator with the stick instead of the yoke and after solving some issues due to the different effect of gain between yoke and stick (which generated noticeable PIO) we gave controls to our Chief TP for him to express his opinion. Myself, the TP and the othe FTE all expressed the same opinion: controlling the a/c via the stick required much more attention and carefulness than by the yoke, mainly due to the coupling of front and side movements of the stick.
Of course I also personally tried a number of different calibrations, but indeed it was always much easier by using the yoke to decouple forw/aft displacements from right/left ones.
Of course I know that 99.9% of aerobatic a/c which are performing high precision manoeuvres are controlled by stick, but my personal impression is that the correct use of the stick requires more training compared to yokes.
I would like to know if you ever faced this issue and if you have different opinions. Any thoughts welcome!