Just curious. I realized today that I very rarely use the yoke for altitude adjustment, especially flying big iron. I use it to rotate, but then once I'm climbing adjust with trim, and don't use the yoke again until I flare when landing.

Me too Panda. The degree of control with the yoke is actually much worse than with my old CH flightstick. This is just about my only complaint with FS. Fortunately I have the rocker switch programmed for trim so it's easy to use, but it's unfortunate you don't get better elevator control with this yoke.Noel

While the yoke does affect altitude adjustment, pitch is considered to be primarily for airspeed. If you need to climb or descend slightly to hold a specific altitude a very slight power adjustment might be better.I find that trim adjustments are too coarse in FS with the aircraft going into a kind of pitch oscillation until it settles. Use the yoke to establish your pitch and then let it slowly get back to its neutral position as you adjust pitch.You should also be cautious as to not let trim get too far near the ends of its control limits by wrong power/speed adjustments or aircraft imbalance. If you engage Autopilot which works mostly by trim, the trim may hit its limit and the AP might not be able to maintain proper pitch.

I mainly use the yoke and trim to remove the tension the centering springs put on my hand, trimming it with the rocker switch until it wants to fly hands off. Using just the trim for pitch adjustments leads to ocillasions as a rule. If you're in a plane with negative static, or positive static with negative dynamic stability, this could be dangerous. In the former, the aircraft would continue to pitch up untill you stalled, or pitch down until it hit terrain. In the latter, is would ocillate up and down with greater increases in altitude gain and loss each time intil it hit something. For animated examples of this, you can look at http://www.aero.und.edu/multimedia/stability.htmlAlso, while the trim can theoretically hold you at level flight, it can only do so in absolutely calm air. However, in the real world it is never absolutely calm. You will find that you are still bumped around enough that trim won't hold you.I have no problem controlling aircraft by the CH USB Yoke, but we may have two different settings calibrated. Do you use two hands, or one hand on the yoke? This has been known to cause over correction, the same as when driving a car. Fine adjustments are needed as well so you really use little movement on the yoke. ----------------------------------------------------------------John S. MorganReal World: KGEG, UND Aerospace Spokane Satillite, Private 130+ hrs.Virtual: MSFS 2004"There is a feeling about an airport that no other piece of ground can have. No matter what the name of the country on whose land it lies, an airport is a place you can see and touch that leads to a reality that can only be thought and felt." - The Bridge Across Forever: A Love Story by Richard Bach

Power adjustment will give you the finest trim control. You do have to wait a bit for things to stabilize, so it's no good for quick pitch changes.David

At a PPL level, you use the yoke to pitch to the attitude which gives you your desired speed, then trim to remove the force on the yoke, then adjust power to maintain level flight.Some a/c have very sensitive trim controls, others don`t. Milton`s Howard, for example needs a good dollop of up trim when configuring for landing. Its one of the few a/c where I can actually hold the trim button down for a spell, rather than just tapping it. On the other hand, the Captain Sim 727 seems to never have quite the right trim position and I always seem to throw too large a trim change in. As David says, often fine tweaks of the power setting are needed to get level flight.CheersLungs