I am EXACTLY the same way! But I am going to have to learn to be comfortable with my left hand on the stick and right hand on the throttle because I am looking at a side by side with the throttle in the center console. I guess I could always fly it from the right seat. Hummmmm.
Yeah, I know the 727s are that way. Seems like a logical setup to me, I am surprised we don’t see it in small planes.
I just watched a YouTube video about ‘Guy Martin’s Spitfire’. Skip to the end where the plane is being flown for the first time since restoration and a camera in the interior clearly shows that the stick is designed to only move forward and back relative to the floor, but the yoke handle part of the stick (which begins above the pilots knees) pivots left and right to operate the ailerons.
My guess is that the cockpit was made so narrow that the pilot didn’t have much room between his knees for the stick to move very far left-to-right.
The point about the skirt wasn’t that a female pilot necessarily would be wearing one, but that a male pilot would like to take his wife/mistress/girlfriend for a ride, and would want her in the front seat, which would normally be configured with controls. When Cessna went to yokes, they were looking at car sales, and were very keen on the notion of family aircraft to go along with the family car.
When you consider that step-through bicycle frames are still very popular as “girls bikes” even though diamond frames are mechanically superior, it shouldn’t be a surprise that accommodating skirts is a consideration.
My understanding is that yokes first came on the scene for large aircraft, to allow the pilot to use both arms to deal with large control forces. Power assisted controls took a long time to happen. Not only do they need to be super reliable, but there are weight considerations as well. The pilot already has two arms, you might as well put them to work. There are aerodynamic tricks to reduce control forces, but they can lead to flutter and other evils if over-done. Effective trim mechanisms mean the pilot only has to deal with high forces when maneuvering, so it isn’t an issue at cruise.
I have mostly flown aircraft with sticks, and only a few times with yokes. The stick feels far more natural, but that may just be my bias. I do notice the friction in the yoke setups…if I felt that in a stick setup, I’d be investigating the source of the trouble.
Why is it called a yoke?
Silly female pilots! Every proper lady knows that female pilots should fly their airplanes sidesaddle!
<d&r>
I question the ‘skirt’ hypothesis. Some of the earliest aircraft had ‘steering wheels’ (actual circular wheels), which are analogous to the more-familiar yoke-shaped yokes.
Certainly in the 1950s through the mid-1960s there was a campaign to market airplanes as things you can ‘drive in the sky’. In the 1940s, the Ercoupe even lacked rudder pedals. Cessna switched from conventional landing gear to tricycle landing gear in the '50s to make their airplanes easier to land. (They called their tricylce gear ‘Land-O-Matic’.)
So in my opinion, yokes became popular in the most popular light aircraft because of the efforts to make flying seem as easy as driving a car. Guessing, I’d say that a yoke also suggested a connection to larger, more prestigious aircraft. (i.e., the ‘big boys’ used yokes, while ‘mere kites’ used sticks.) I think that yokes don’t get in the way of skirts is an unintended benefit.
So why weren’t yokes designed to look more like steering wheels? Why rectangular and open at the top, instead of round and closed?
The earliest yokes were similar to what are often found on bombers and other heavies, the pitch is still a stick, but there is a wheel or yolk for roll at the top. Like on this Curtis model D
The skirt thing came from making the pitch function a linear fore-aft sliding action from a single point on the panel, rather than hinged from the floor. Translating this motion to drive the elevator is what makes a yoke hard to implement. Roll just takes a sprocket and some roller chain.
Let’s not forget the first 20+ posts of this thread are 13 years old …
As to Senegoid’s recent question about shape: The top part of the yoke hub on a typical modern big airplane already interferes a bit with seeing all the instruments. Adding a cross-bar across the top of the wheel just makes the problem worse.
Said another way, the early aircraft had a circular wheel like a car’s. As aircraft got more complex and more instruments and switches got added to the panel and as flying became more a matter of controlling the vehicle from looking at the panel, not looking out the window, the traditional circular wheel came to be seen as an obstacle.
The fix was to saw the top half of the circle off while reinforcing the bottom half to still be stout enough to manhandle. The rest, all the way up to the 787 and the latest aerial uber Rolls-Royce Gulfstreams, is just styling.
One odd side effect of the standard Airbus sidestick design is that every captain in the left-hand seat controls the aircraft with his left hand, and the copilot with his right. The first time I saw this I actually thought the sticks must swing out to a center position, but they do not. The US military apparently did studies proving that LH flying for a right-hander or vice-versa posed no disadvantages. I actually find that a bit hard to believe, but it must be true as obviously Airbus knew what they were doing when they made this design common to all their aircraft. But I still find it strange.
In a Cessna I fly with my left hand, as someone noted a dozen years ago. In a helicopter I fly with my right hand. I think it would feel natural to fly from the right seat in a Cessna and use my right hand.
All true.
Non-sidestick airliners of all various makes have yokes with two uprights. But everybody flies with one hand on the throttles and the other on the outboard yoke horn. The inboard yoke horn only gets touched if we’re fighting a control jam or an unusual attitude recovery. IOW, substantially never in the real world.
So all e.g. Boeing captains fly with their left hand and control power with their right. And listen to ATC with their left ear. While all co-pilots fly with their right hand and control power with their left. And listen to ATC with their right ear. It’s a total non-issue.
Practically speaking, Airbus sidesticks use the exact same arrangement.
As one long-time friend, airline pilot, former A-10 instructor, and all-around excellent dude once said: “You don’t fly with your hands; you fly with your mind.”
I don’t think I’ve ever seen, let alone flown, a glider with a yoke.
Stick/yoke, either hand, makes no difference in comfort or control.
All other things I have a heavy right hand bias.
Prefer a stick for formation flying.
That’s most of my experience as well. But …
Almost all the USAF heavies that can aerial refuel do so with a yoke. And AFAIK only the Aircraft Commander (i.e. the captain) in the left seat does it. So close formation between two ponderous transports is flown with the left hand for flight path and the right for power.
In fact on the underside of the tanker forward of the wings are a set of guide lights that indicate where you are in the refueling envelope. A row running lengthwise on the left indicates up /down and a row running lengthwise on the right indicates fore/aft. That arrangement was chosen so the info on the left drives the AC’s left hand and the info on the right drives his right.
The lights are also arranged so the signals are the same sense. Lights pointing aft means pull back on either yoke or throttles, and conversely lights pointing forward means push forward. Here’s a 2MB PDF which talks a bit about them and has good pix: http://cormusa.org/uploads/Visual_signaling_Aerial_Refueling_Tanker_s_PDL__Pilot_Director_Lights__Improvement_for_Pilot_s_Visual_Acuity.pdf
All fighter guys have to reverse this and apply the right lights’ info to the left hand and vice versa. Fortunately, we’re better enough than bomber guys this isn’t difficult. 
I have been in the cockpit while a C-130 was taking fuel from a KC-135 tanker. The C-130 is at nearly max speed and the tanker is at near stall. And the AC is working that yoke like it’s a hamster wheel. Kinda disconcerting actually.
I have always wondered about the difficulty of close formation in heavy aircraft.
Easier or harder?
Because of relative position & turbulence or is the mass and getting it to make the small corrections the more difficult part?
Is that a tested activity and some can not get certified to do it or would that knock you out of flying heavies completely?
Fighter pilots would absolutely have to be able to do it, right?
Which is more nerve wracking, tight but not “Blue Angels” tight formation for the same amount of time with the pilots having never worked together before or refueling on an ocean jump where you got to get’er done or go swimming?
Agreed, I have about 25 hours in a Stearman and having flown a yoke too the sick is my preferred input. Plus, it gives you that fighter pilot feel as well!
Spitfire sticks and others.
You can see quite clearly in this pic where the pivot point for the aileron control is. It is just below the spade grip itself, the rest of the stick just moves fore and aft for pitch control. This is actually quite similar to how many transport category yokes are set up, a big stick for pitch movement with the yoke attached to it for roll control.
On small GA aircraft that setup doesn’t work because there is not enough room in the cockpit. The C152 has a typical small plane yoke that comes directly out of the instrument panel and allows the pilot to fly with their legs in a natural seated position (no room for “man-spreading”).
The Aero Commander series of aircraft have a hybrid design where the column comes up the side of the cockpit in an upside down “L” shape with the yoke attached to the crossarm. You still get to have your legs together while keeping the mechanical advantage of a long stick for pitch control.
As mentioned above, the Concorde had an inverted W yoke connected to the standard transport category stick. Embraer seem to like the idea and have fitted their Ejets with something very similar (about the only thing that IS similar between those two flight decks).
The Victa Airtourer has a single central stick with a rectangular grip reminiscent of the Spitfire’s spade grip that can be handled from either seat.
I’ll join the chorus and say that I prefer the feel of a stick. I think, for me, it is because I kind of conceptualise the control stick as though it is stuck to the top of a model aeroplane that pivots on a point. So you move the top of the stick backwards and the plane pitches up, move it forwards and it pitches down, move the top of the stick sideways and the plane rolls. A yoke has the same sense for pitch control but for roll control it is a bit weird in that, particularly if you have just one hand on one of the control horns, to roll the plane you actually move the bit of the yoke you are holding, up or down. This isn’t a problem at all and like anything you adapt if you have enough exposure but I do feel that I’m not as connected to a plane with a yoke as I am to a plane with a stick. The fact that planes with sticks tend to be more manoeuvrable anyway probably reinforces my opinion.
That said, one of the nicest aeroplanes I’ve had the pleasure of flying has been the Aero Commander. Really nice and responsive controls and very manoeuvrable. It helps that the job involved what were effectively government sponsored “beat ups” of anything the crew deemed to be of interest along Australia’s western coastline.