Hand flying

[Keith Smith]

If you'd like a first class yoke...Precision Flight Controls makes the best one that I've ever flown. Not cheap, but worth it, I suspect, in the long run.

I used to have a Pegasus AVB force feedback stick. It was unbelievably precise, didn't cost much, and you could adjust the stick tension through the control panel. Unfortunately it's out of production and they don't make drivers for Windows 7, so mine is now gathering dust.

The yoke that Reece is talking about sounds promising, but sadly, unavailable. I hope that it does make its way into other products. PFC now has control loading as well, but not in their retail level products.

[tngarner]

I took the springs off my Satiek yoke and replaced all the springs with 3 wide rubber bands. There are some you tube videos and blogs out there on how to do this.

Not perfect by any means but makes it better. The only issue with this is there is little to no resistance when you make inputs so a bit unrealistic in this regard. I can accidentally put the sim in a 45 to 60 deg bank with no effort where in a real plane you would have to really mean to do that at cruise speed due to the forces on the control.

I have been thinking of playing with different strength springs but have not found the motivation yet to try it.

The resolution of the Satek yoke seems to be a bit poor, with that I have found that joy sticks seem to be a bit better but I really like the feel of the yoke. May be why my try at a Cirus was a nightmare.

[bbuckley]

I have FSX and Saitek yoke / throttle module and I hand fly all the time. I mostly fly a Carenado Archer II. I hand fly because our club Archer AP is heading hold only, and it sways a lot, so I never use it RW, and so I never use it FSX either. I also have adjusted the controls in FSUIPC but I don't have any trouble hand flying and find it very realistic. So I guess it's doable...
Bruce