Real Life
- In real life you obviously use what the aircraft comes with.
- A large trim wheel does give you more control over fine pitch movements but is slower to make large trim changes.
- In some ways a trim wheel can be safer as you are not going to get some of the “runaway trim” issues of a faulty button system.
- Trim wheels are however problematic mechanically and can be unreliable, with autopilots needing electric motors to turn them they are more expensive, which is probably the main reason they are disappearing in real aircraft - the cost of making them workable with an AP
In sim
trim wheel pros -
- better fine control
- more realistic if you are also flying a trim wheel aircraft in real life
trim wheel cons -
- you need to take your hand off the joystick/yoke to adjust it
- some trim wheels get “out of sync” with where the autopilot has set the trim ( as there is no electric motor to move it to the new position) meaning you can get a sudden pitch change after turning autopilot off