Flight Sim CH yokes/pedals PIREP

Our new CH yoke and rudder pedals arrived yesterday, and I had a chance
to hook 'em up today. What a difference -- they literally change
everything about "flying" a PC-based sim!

Until now, flying MS Flight Sim '04 using the big screen projector at
the hotel has been cool, but, well, unreal. A joystick -- even a
force-feedback stick, like we used -- is simply a bad compromise when
you're trying to fly the pattern in a Skyhawk. And steering on the
ground by twisting the joystick aggravated every pilot who tried it.
(Interestingly, non-pilots had no trouble with it at all...)

Out of the box, the yoke and pedals seem to be very high quality. The
pedals in particular have a heft to them that connotes quality, and
they move very smoothly, seemingly on ball bearings. Hooking them up
could not have been easier -- I plugged them into their own USB ports,
and they instantly worked as advertised. Plug & play really *has*
arrived!

I've set the program to default to SEATAC in a 172, so that was my
first attempt. To my surprise, everything worked precisely like in a
real plane, with the throttle, mixture, and flap controls all where
they belong. I did not need to make adjustments to any program
parameters -- each switch and rocker just worked from the get-go.
Finally, to my delight, the rudder pedals rocked forward (and the
program understood this), providing toe brakes EXACTLY like in the
plane. (I wasn't expecting this at all...)

My first circuit around the pattern was amazing, after years of flying
with a joystick. Steering on the ground was 100% intuitive, and
everything felt perfectly normal and real, including slipping to land.
With a 104 inch screen and surround sound (the sub-woofer makes it
sound almost perfect), the illusion of reality was remarkable, and
darned-near perfect.

My A&P is welding up a "cockpit" from tubing, using the electrically
adjustable seat out of my Mustang (I just installed leather in the car,
which left me with a surplus seat) as the starting point, which will
make the experience even *more* realistic once we permanently install
the yoke and pedals. For now, however, clamping the yoke to a table is
working just fine.

If anyone has entertained the notion of doing something like this, I
can highly recommend it. The $179 I paid for both controls (that's
together, not apiece) is well worth it, as I believe that the flight
simulator experience is now truly "as real as it gets" outside of
actually flying an airplane. I can hardly wait for our next Movie
Night at the Inn to put the new equipment to the test!
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

In article . com,
"Jay Honeck" wrote:

[snipperoo]
My A&P is welding up a "cockpit" from tubing, using the electrically
adjustable seat out of my Mustang (I just installed leather in the car,
which left me with a surplus seat) as the starting point, which will
make the experience even *more* realistic once we permanently install
the yoke and pedals. For now, however, clamping the yoke to a table is
working just fine.

Don't make it too nice, or people will get a little put off when climbing
into a beat-up rental for real flying. Maybe make the seat dirty and
have extra papers and candy wrappers here and there...

(btw - how does leather create a surplus seat????)

--
Bob Noel
Looking for a sig the
lawyers will hate

(btw - how does leather create a surplus seat????)

The leather seats were out of an '02 Mustang convertible that was
totalled in a wreck. Found 'em on Ebay for just $175 bucks!

My 16-year old son (who desperately would love a car of his own) has
taken the other (non-electric) front seat, attached 2 x 4s to the
bottom, and converted it into a reading chair in his bed room. We kid
him that he's building his own car, one piece at a time!

:-)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

In article om,
"Jay Honeck" wrote:

(btw - how does leather create a surplus seat????)

The leather seats were out of an '02 Mustang convertible that was
totalled in a wreck. Found 'em on Ebay for just $175 bucks!

ah.

--
Bob Noel
Looking for a sig the
lawyers will hate

"Bob Noel" wrote in message
...
Don't make it too nice, or people will get a little put off when climbing
into a beat-up rental for real flying. Maybe make the seat dirty and
have extra papers and candy wrappers here and there...

Well, you could use some of the cheaper seats that they sell for boats...
Something like this:
http://www.basspro.com/servlet/catal...=SearchResults
http://www.basspro.com/servlet/catal...=SearchResults

Hell, it's probably more comfortable than the seats in my aircraft come to
think of it...

Jay Honeck wrote:
The pedals in particular have a heft to them that connotes quality,
and they move very smoothly, seemingly on ball bearings.

If the casing comes off easily, you might take a look. There's a 50-50
chance you'll find steel strips in there that don't do anything but add
weight.

My A&P is welding up a "cockpit" from tubing, using the electrically
adjustable seat out of my Mustang (I just installed leather in the car,
which left me with a surplus seat) as the starting point, which will
make the experience even *more* realistic once we permanently install
the yoke and pedals.

If you're not using an actual car battery, you'll probably need a pretty
beefy power supply to adjust the seat with. Power seats in cars often
have a 20 A or more breaker. One cheaper way to do it without a full car
battery would be a 5 to 10 Ah/20h gel-cell battery, continuously charged
by a wall-wart type charger. The battery can handle the brief bursts of
high current, as long as somebody doesn't sit down and try to adjust the
seat for 20 minutes straight.

Matt Roberds

On 2006-10-27, wrote:
Jay Honeck wrote:
The pedals in particular have a heft to them that connotes quality,
and they move very smoothly, seemingly on ball bearings.

If the casing comes off easily, you might take a look. There's a 50-50
chance you'll find steel strips in there that don't do anything but add
weight.

ABSOLUTELY DO **NOT** TAKE APART THE PEDALS. Ask me how I know ;-)

I have the yoke and pedals as well, and I think I easily got my money's
worth in terms of practice (especially IFR) using them. The only major
objection I have is that trim does not work right (but that's true of
almost any type of joystick).

--
Ben Jackson AD7GD

http://www.ben.com/

Ben Jackson wrote:
I have the yoke and pedals as well, and I think I easily got my money's
worth in terms of practice (especially IFR) using them. The only major
objection I have is that trim does not work right (but that's true of
almost any type of joystick).


I've got the trim pretty well squared away now. My remaining complaint about
the pedals is that I'm all over the runway with them, even after setting the
sensitivity down to 10% of the default setting. I'm not really sure what to do
about that.

I do find the sim helps me keep a good scan going when I don't fly enough to do
it otherwise.




--
Mortimer Schnerd, RN
mschnerdatcarolina.rr.com

I have the yoke and pedals as well, and I think I easily got my money's
worth in terms of practice (especially IFR) using them. The only major
objection I have is that trim does not work right (but that's true of
almost any type of joystick).

The trim on our new CH yoke seems to work just fine. It's a roller
knob, like the dimmer switch on a Cherokee panel, and is a vast
improvement over the keyboard-adjustable trim.

Aside from the obvious improvement in realism, I think what I'm most
impressed with is how everything simply works, straight out of the box.
I haven't had to assign any of the multitude of switches and buttons,
I haven't had to adjust any software -- hell, I haven't even CALIBRATED
the things. They just *worked* straight away -- which is unheard of,
in my experience. No software to run, no drivers to load -- they just
GO.

I've now let several pilots "fly" our new set up, and to a person they
are all impressed. Even Mary was able to land the plane successfully,
and she is as simulator-averse as anyone I've ever met.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

I have the CH rudder pedals, F-16 throttle and stick.
What I need is a custom seat to mount everything to for the total
experience. Sitting in an upright chair with the pedals on the floor and
the throttle and stick setting on the table just does not feel right.
Jay, please post a picture of your new "cockpit" when it is completed.