For those who don’t know, the swing-over yoke actually does swing over from the pilot’s seat to the front passenger’s seat. This arrangement allows more room for the non-flying occupant. In both the dual- and sing-over arrangements, the Bonanza’s control column is in the center of the panel.
The links also illustrate why there are so many 50-year-old airplanes still flying. A typical ‘vintage’ Bonanza panel looks a bit like this. The first link in this post shows an upgraded panel from a Bonanza built in 1975. The second link, which shows an even more advanced panel, is to a Bonanza that was built in 1958.
The WWII Lockheed P-38 had essentially the same installation as the co-pilot side of the Aero Commander. And for the same reasons.
On the stick front …
The F-16 has an almost non-moving computer-stick mounted on the right side of the cockpit. All subsequent fighters of all countries, despite being equally fly-by-wire, have gone back to the more traditional floor-mounted stick centered between the pilot’s legs. IOW the F-16 arrangement is now seen to have been a mistake.
The reason may not be what folks expect. The issue is that with the stick over there it becomes more difficult to crank your body around to see what’s behind you on the left side. And there’s no practical way to fly with your left hand, even briefly.
Like the leaned-back ejection seat, the side-mounted stick was a workaround to shoe-horn a cockpit into an airplane that was much smaller than any recent fighter. Since then the style has moved back towards slightly larger aircraft with room for more conventional arrangements.
Some heavies have interesting hybrid arrangements. The C-17 has floor-mounted sticks centered in front of each pilot. The sticks have the Spitfire-style mid-level pivot, where pitch pivots at the floor and roll pivots above knee level. It has a single central set of conventional throttles. http://m.airliners.net/photo/detail/id/2693167 . So the Aircraft Commander / captain is flying like Airbus guys do: left stick & right throttles. That feels very backwards to me but I know it’ll only take a week or so to feel normal if I ever have to do it.
I can’t find a photo now, but IIRC the B-1 Lancer has a similar stick, but has dual sets of throttles. So the copilot uses the throttles on the right edge of the center pedestal and the AC/captain has a separate set along the left sidewall. So both AC & copilot fly fighter style with right stick & left throttles.
I worked a few years with a former General Dynamics controls engineer. According to him the prototype F-16 stick was totally non-moving, with force sensing only.
It worked fine in clear weather. in IMC, the pilots couldn’t deal with it. A spring mounting was devised, to allow some motion, which made the airplane flyable in the soup.
One reason for a non-moving stick is that it is desirable to have the pilot lock their forearm onto an armrest for comfort and also for smooth control. In the case of a full motion stick, the roll pivot needs to be just below the armrest, and the pitch pivot needs to be inside the pilot’s wrist. Sperry actually had a virtual pivot mechanism on the KC-10 boom control stick that did that.
