Sticks and yokes and wardrobe malfunctions

No matter which type of airplane you fly, the journey starts out in a remarkably similar manner to that experienced by every other pilot flying any other airplane. Roll out onto the runway. Align the airplane with the centerline. Throttle up. Gain airspeed. Rotate and fly. It’s all very civilized and proper. 

Yet, for all that commonality, there is a profound difference to be found — glaring examples of technological divergence that have for decades put some of us in one camp while others steadfastly lock into the other. 

The method of controlling the airplane’s elevator and ailerons is a hot-button topic for many of us. Are you a stick lover or a yoke aficionado? Pick a side, pilot.

Like most pilots of my age range, I learned to fly in Cessnas and Pipers that were fitted with yokes. Since that was my early experience, flying with a yoke control in front of me seemed perfectly reasonable. Preferable, I imagined. The yoke came later in the development of the airplane. Much later, in fact. So, it must be an improvement, I reasoned. 

I was a few hundred hours into my flying career when I got the chance to fly an airplane with a stick. In my case it was a Piper J-3 Cub, as it was for so many thousands of pilots who came before me. I fretted about the control system on the night before my flight. Would I be able to adapt to a stick? Would my brain even understand what movement was necessary to control pitch and roll simultaneously? 

I worry too much. 

In the morning, the sun rose, the dew evaporated, the airplane appeared, and I got my first dual experience flying an airplane that was designed when my long dead granddad had been just a young fellow. To my complete surprise, control was entirely intuitive. I didn’t have to think at all. Which some might think to be an improvement over my normal state. I don’t care. The stick was an absolute joy to use. I felt right at home from the first input. 

Yokes are indeed considered to be an improvement on the stick. But not for the reason I would have originally guessed. My initial assumption was that yokes provided better input control somehow. Maybe they provided superior leverage, although that seemed unlikely. Perhaps they gave a more concrete indication of control inputs to the pilot in the other seat. I wasn’t sure, but if the yoke came later in the development of the airplane, then it must be better. Right?

The Wright brothers used a cradle to control wing warping. The pilot, who flew from a position more suited to taking a nap than flying an airplane, moved his hips left or right to warp the wing, inducing a roll. 

This system was imperfect, at best. But it worked. To a degree. 

Glenn Curtiss built an airplane that allowed the pilot to sit upright, but controlled the roll axis via the pilot leaning one shoulder or the other into a mechanism that resulted in one wing rising while the other dropped. Body English was very much a proper and necessary method of controlling the airplane for a brief time. 

Even in the modern day people have tinkered with the basics of airplane controls. Cessna built the short-lived Skycatcher, more officially known as the C-162. The airplane sported a yoke control, but it worked in an entirely different way from other Cessna yokes. Pitch was controlled by adding pressure to the yoke, or reversing that pressure. In that sense it was very conventional. 

Controlling the ailerons was an entirely different deal, however. Rather than turning the yoke left or right to initiate a roll in the direction the yoke was turned, the Skycatcher yoke slid from side to side. This means a climbing right turn involved pulling back on the yoke, while simultaneously sliding the yoke itself to the right. 

Very weird. Just flat out peculiar. I wonder if that Light Sport machine might have caught on a bit better if it had not been saddled with the most bizarre flight control system most pilots have ever seen. 

Which brings me back to my initial thought about the stick. Why did the stick fall out of fashion? What caused Piper to nix the stick controls of the PA-16 in favor of the yoke installed in the PA-20? In a word, decorum. 

For all its simplicity and ease of use, the stick is simply in the way. They take up valuable real estate in the middle of the floor immediately in front of the pilot and front seat passenger. Moving one’s legs around them can be an intricate dance, complete with a bit of huffing and puffing and maybe a bad word or two. Trying to accomplish the same task while wearing a dress is even more difficult. 

If the idea was to make airplanes more enticing to the public, more appealing to the masses, the stick had to go. And it went. For the most part, but not entirely. 

Vans aircraft are loved and admired, and they are built with sticks, not yokes. The Cirrus designs kept the stick but moved it up into the panel to open up the much-contested legroom area of the cockpit. They’ve found great success with their design, as well. And the classics remain classics. Nobody is out there trying to convert biplanes and early monoplanes to yoke controls. 

Me? I fly an airplane with a yoke most of the time. But I have a great fondness for airplanes that are controlled with a stick. To this day I fly them whenever I can. I find the whole experience is much more enjoyable if I simply choose to wear pants, however. Wearing a dress is a no-go. It is for me, anyway.  

And that’s my advice to you, as well. If you haven’t flown behind a stick, try it. You just might like it. But choose your wardrobe carefully. It matters.