On 2/19/2017 9:02 AM, Tango Eight wrote:
On Sunday, February 19, 2017 at 9:59:27 AM UTC-5, Martin Gregorie wrote:
On Sun, 19 Feb 2017 05:08:07 -0800, Tango Eight wrote:

Had a side stick for a decade. Center stick is just better.

Can you expand a bit, please?

Sure...
(Snip...)

All of the side stick designs I've seen for direct mechanical actuation of
controls require a sliding fore/aft motion for elevator (elbow + shoulder)
and a rolling motion of the wrist for aileron. Blending those motions with
finesse is just more work (more fatigue) than a conventional gimballed
stick. I landed out a couple of times in my side stick glider simply
because I got tired and sloppy after 4+ hours and couldn't climb well.
Coordination never became unconscious in that ship.

"Mercy!" he exclaims about having to landout. I never suffered that particular
fate as a result of my side stick (longest single-flight time 9 hours), but I
concur with the sentiment of that last sentence. Coordinating my Zuni is
another of those things that's "different" about the ship...as was
coordinating my (similarly high-in-roll w. light pitch forces) HP-14 before
it. Not dangerous or difficult, just "not unconscious," as in always on the
fringes of my awareness. But, from my perspective, simultaneously never a
problem, just "different."

FWIW - for readers unfamiliar with the HP-14, HP-18, Zuni designs - Evan's
HP-18 (side stick) and my HP-14 (center stick) are both fully supine designs,
while the (original side-stick-design) Zuni has a "standard semi-reclined"
seating position...with a normally-sized cockpit and instrument pod and view
outside.

I transitioned into my HP-14 with ~200 total hours and put ~200 hours on it
before transitioning into the Zuni. No "German quality" optics on either, the
HP-14 having more distortion thanks to looking though its flat-wrapped forward
canopy section at very shallow in-flight angles. I always found that more of a
"mental nuisance" than I did anything about the fully-reclined seating (*very*
comfortable IMO). Ditto its quite narrow - even for thin, small-framed me -
cockpit with limited sandwich space...though it had eNORmous space atop/after
the spars for water (sucked via tube), multiple O2 tanks, a tent (aerotowed to
a camp once), etc. Of course all visual complaints vanished upon use of
landing flaps (I always used 90-degrees in the HP). So its supine pilot
position may well have been somewhat problematic for old-style,
visually-acquired turnpoints, in contest flying when the HP-14 was designed...

Bob W.