Search the Community

I have had A CH Products yoke for 10+ years now, and a Saitek throttle quadrant for about 3 years. The yoke had become sloppy and increasingly hard to physically calibrate. The throttle produced different values for thrust / manifold pressure / prop speed and mixture for each of the two engines, even though the handles for each engine were physically centralized. Further, the controls were sloppy, with some having more tightness than others. So, I asked my "better half" for the Redbird yoke (YK1) and the twin throttle quadrant (TH2), for Christmas this year. Before requesting them I had established contact with the owner of the RedBird company, Todd Willinger, who offered excellent pre-sales advice. The product was advertised as being compatible with Windows and FSX- I use X-Plane 11 on a Mac. Todd felt confident that the product would work OK for me, but offered to talk to me should it not work- as good service as I could ever expect. I had noted that XP11 has a .txt file called "Known joysticks.txt" and "Known yokes.txt", and the Redbird products did not appear in either of these two files (the CH Products and Saitek devices did). So, it was with some trepidation that I installed both of these new devices (they are much larger, with large alloy boxes containing the mechanisms for both devices). I was pleasantly surprised when I plugged in the USB connections through a USB hub, started XP11 and found that the devices were correctly identified, and the available assignments for each were also correct. Calibration and assignment is easy in XP11, and everything worked. My biggest impressions are the following: 1. Excellent pre and after sales support. 2. Worked on a Mac and in XP11, and is correctly identified. 3. The physical movement of the yoke and the throttle quadrant levers feels just like the real Baron- the yoke and levers are even the correct sizes. Physical tension feels correct. 4. Amazingly, the throttle/ prop / mixture levers track perfectly- no more needing to compensate for the lack of control tracking. The yoke always seamlessly returns to the same exact position- no more needing to trim for the physical "floppiness" in the yoke mechanics. 5. The throttle quadrant comes with very realistic switches for flaps and gear, and well as a reocker switch for rudder trim. The yoke comes with a PTT switch plus auto-pilot disconnect/toggle, and a rocker switch for elevator trim. very nice! Feel free to reply here or PM me with any questions. Thanks, Bruce.