Hey Folks, This is my first post, but I am a long time FS fan. I would love to buy the CH Yoke, but due to budget issues and lack of Force Feedback (I know, some don't like it), I can't/won't purchase it at this time. My question to you is, can we take an existing FF Joystick and set up a yoke that moves the stick according to the yokes position? I have the idea in my head, but can't seem to get it out of there for illustrative purposes. I just wanted to see if any clever homebuilders out there can solve the engineering problem. Also, it needs to be connected in such a way that the FF affects the yoke forces, or if an existing FF joystick can be dissassembled and have its FF guts installed in a homebuilt yoke. If they can be transplanted, then the G-Force Plus yoke looks like the way to go for budget reasons. Thanks in advance, Justin

Forcefeedback is really not necessary to get a good yoke feeling of what you would experience on a real airliner. You need to have the CH yoke built with double the spring tension and the tension should be on four axis and not two.There is "NO" middle ground or give on the yoke. When the hydraulics are actuated in the real thing, there is no 'play' and lots and I mean lots of tension to move the yoke in the up, down, left to right axis and enough said..I have purchased a very expensive yoke and sent it back because it had that 'little-finger' movement in the flightsim world of centering the yoke.....'There is no center'....There is 'CONSTANT' pressure on it at all times. When are the yoke people going to wake up and put out a product with strong tension in all four axis WITHOUT a center sloppy area which is not what 'as real as it gets' is all about....Lots of work needs to be done in this hardware area and nobody has come up with a half decent yoke and that goes for the expensive ones also.....NO CENTERING.....No calibration of the famous; "Click any button when the yoke is centered" ....No, no, no........Regards & hope somebody with alittle engineering sense can develope a yoke that feels and acts like the real thing. I don't care what I have to pay for it, I'll shell it out...but by God, make it 90 percent correct....noullet

So what you are saying is that any aircraft yoke has a feel like a car-steering-wheel; but then more axis of movement ?

I guess I should have been more specific and stated that the current line of relatively inexpensive yokes, and some expensive ones to boot, that are currently manufactured for airline-specific type aircraft such as the Boeing 737, do not have any free play in the movement of the yoke ..In other words, there is 'no play' in the yoke and there is 'no center'. When the hydraulics of an airliner such as the 737 series are actuated, you have to exert a constant pressure on the yoke to make the aircraft pitch up or down or side to side. You don't calibrate a yoke and there is 'NO CENTER' to it. The tension should be rigid in all movements of the pitch & roll axis. You cannot move an airliner yoke with your little finger and there is NO PLAY in the center. Without experiencing the real thing, it's hard to explain it, but I hope that adds a little to what the future should hold for those manufacturing hardware for the magnificent software that we now have in the flightsim community.Regards,noullet

Well actually there is center... if you trim your plane right.

Hi there,Since we can not produce air flow in our living rooms, so simulator community has replaced that with spring and centering and calibrating. If we want to follow gremels ambitition and requirements lets not forget that there is NO REAL skies, NO REAL airports nor REAL AIRPLANES either. That

BTW Who's a licensed pilot here?Also , who has ever used a real yoke in a jetliner? Just to know who really knows what he 's talking about... ;-)

I have..Regards,jack

You mean you have touched a jetliner yoke while it was flying, lucky you... Are you a pilot?

Graduated from Naval Aviation Flight school way back and have since retired from a major corporation. I have a friend at Boeing who has let me in one of the 737NG-700 real simulators that cost approx. $25 mil per sim. I have logged a lot of hours on it and have logged 4 hours alone of strictly MANUAL flight through all phases. The check-pilot told me later that he would have passed me if I were a commercial airline pilot in for the mandatory 6 month 'horror box' ride.He also said that this sim is 99% as real as it gets. So yes, in a sense, I can tell you that the yokes that exist today are a far cry from the real ones and the software is almost 99% of the real thing. Regards,jack

That's impressive! :) At least be sure that there is centering in little aircraft, but I guess you already know that.

The other thing is that the way computers see the joysticks, you ABSOLUTELY have to have a center to tell the computer how far away from that center that the yoke is at. Without that origin information, the yoke will operate poorly. To calibrate consistently a center each and every time, there has to be a centering mechanism. Now, with current technologies, you could have a meter to measure the pressure exerted on each side of the yoke column forwards and back and ensure that the pressures are the same, but in order to develop that with the yoke system for a home-built PC with probably Windows on it would take a lot of R&D. Most companies feel that the R&D would be wasteful at best as very few people would buy it.Just the other side of the mirror here.

>That's impressive! :) At least be sure that there is>centering in little aircraft, but I guess you already know>that.I think the truth is somewhere in between here :-)The "hydraulic heavy feel" what the big planes have is true - but I am pretty sure there is centering on the yoke as well. Otherwise it would just fly whatever attitude you leave the yoke on, and that is just not very practical. I totally agree that there is no "play" or "easy-move" -zone in the center spot of elevator and aileron, since it has the "heavy" suspension feel to it (it doesn't spring to the center in a second if you do pull the yoke full back and let go)The hydraulics just make it feel very different from the spring-centered yokes we have in simulator market. But there is a centering force.The challenge is to build a *dampened* centering force - something that moves to center, but does not feel like a "spring" but more like a car suspension (spring + dampener) in slow motion.So, I think the truth lies somewhere in between the extremities here.//Tuomas

Hi Tuomas,I agree with you in some ways. However I can say that the centering feel in a little aircraft is no extremity talk at all. In fact when you trim your aircraft you kind of make the force in the stick or yoke disappear by adjusting some little surfaces profile (called trim elevators), I can feel that when I'm flying the Robin Hr200 for example.

>Hi Tuomas,>>I agree with you in some ways. However I can say that the>centering feel in a little aircraft is no extremity talk at>all. In fact when you trim your aircraft you kind of make the>force in the stick or yoke disappear by adjusting some little>surfaces profile (called trim elevators), I can feel that when>I'm flying the Robin Hr200 for example.Yeah, sure. In small planes you pull the stick to get the airspeed/attitude you want to flyin, and then "trim out control forces".I built a very rudimentary proof of concept system that does quite a bit like the example on the other thread here - a bungee cord is being stretched tighter by a threaded rod that moves the attachment point closer and farther from the stick. The rod is being rotated by a rechargeable power drill. It works, but makes so much noise that I cannot really use it if I fly later in the night :) It wouldnt be nice to the neighbours. But it works, and it works beautifully. I just need to find a less noisy mechanism to re-implement it.Crappy cellphone video: http://tigert.com/aviation/vatsim/cockpit-...ectric-trim.3gp (RealPlayer can play this)Here's the basic idea, I have posted these also before.http://tigert.com/aviation/vatsim/cockpit-.../kludge++-5.jpg(The screws on the top of the photo are just a test mechanism to see if the idea at all would work) You can see that pulling the bungee to a farther away screw will tighten the rubber, pull the yoke bottom part forward, and thus the control stick moves back. This feels as if you trimmed the nose up. The small plywood wheels contain inline skate bearings inside, thus making the bungee move quite smoothly through the angles.It works fine and feels real. I can totally use it to trim out control forces, just like in real light aircraft.As far as I know, big jets do not have this behaviour, the yoke does not move its centering point when you trim. But it still does have a centering force. It is just very heavily dampened, thus it takes force to move it even just a bit. But if you let go, it *will* return to center.//Tuomas