I have my honeycomb yoke for a while now and while I generally love it, I find the elevator stiffness to be a bit too much. I do trim my aircraft regularly but in order to do that I have to hold the yoke for a little while. That gets painful really fast given how much force I have to use to hold the yoke in place (I do have arthrosis in both hands).
I used a small baggage scale to measure how much force it takes to push/pull on the yoke. It takes 7.4 pounds (3,4 kg) to hold the yoke at almost high pitch and 7 pounds (3,2 kg) to push it almost all the way in. Is that more or less what’s expected or are the rubberbands in my yoke unusually stiff and should I ask for a replacement?
In the beginning I used the yoke with an office chair with rolls. I quickly had the rolls removed and installed a carpet and a anti-slide mat I didn’t had to do that with my pedals.
It is very stiff! I really didn’t like it at first but I am getting used to it.
I am hoping that someone will post a YouTube video soon where they’ve taken it apart & figured out how to weaken the resistance.
It is stiff. I also had the issue with the rolling chair that the OP had. I ended up taking off the wheels and putting pads on the chair to stay in one place.
I changed the double rolls to bigger single ones (similar to inline skates) and two of them come with powerful brakes. That solved the office chair problem for me
I bought these weights on a tray. I will bolt the tray to my simulation stand, and then I can put the weights on the tray, and take them off when I want to move the stand.
Agreed it is very stiff, but I use the Elevator function only on takeoff/landing (Cessna 172). Once I reach about !000 ft AGL I switch to the trim wheel. I don’t touch the Yoke again unless I absolutely have to. If I’m not on Autopilot, I use elevator and aileron trim along with the throttle to stabilize the airplane. Using the yoke to stabilize altitude is too difficult. The airplane acts like porpoises going after a school of sardines.
I also agree that it is stiff BUT in RL the elevator control gets stiffer as the speed increases or the A/C is out of trim. I find it quite realistic. If I have to hold the elevator deflected the the A/C is out of trim. Trim the thing so you dont have to hold continuous deflection. On approach, you should only need small elevator movements to control the aircraft, not large defleactions or holding the elevators deflected. Have a look at some of the u tube videos of flight deck landings. Specifically watch the pilots hands & see how ofter they hit the trim switches on the column. They use them quite a bit on the final approach.
Kev
I didn’t had to do that with my pedals.
