Honeycomb Yoke.....My Impression.
Posted: 25 Nov 2019, 19:41
Received the yoke on Friday after ordering Wednesday so excellent customer service, did not do much as wife was poorly but on getting the chance to set up the yoke I had to change a few things on my desk, throttle quadrant had to go to my right side instead of left as the elevator trim switch is on the left hand side of the yoke. Now I have always been right handed when flying and the thought of now having to use my left hand to fly and right for the throttles, prop u/c et all did not inspire me much towards the yoke and began to think that maybe, with all the hype about the Honeycomb, I might have jumped into the deep end without so much as a thought of whether I was ambidextrous.
There are drivers for the Yoke which can be downloaded from the Honeycomb site for FSX and P3d but with X-Plane 11 no drivers are required. Speaking of drivers, when flying in FSX I did not use the driver and flew quite happily by just assigning Elevators, Ailerons as needed but more on that soon.
Firstly, on each aircraft I selected I had to calibrate the yoke (which makes sense) then I selected only a few buttons such as trim before taking my first flight and finding that flying left-handed was not too bad at all, in fact I began to enjoy it!! but the problem of control setup came right up and hit me when first took off and landed as it did not feel right. Cutting a long and boring fix short I just went to the Control Sensitivity Settings set pitch and roll fully left to fully linear then set Stability Augmentation fully to the right then into the main menu for controls and for pitch and roll went into the Add/Edit Response Curve set both roll and pitch to Linear, straight line no bows or creases. Worked a treat, when flaring I found just pulling back gently got me down really smoothly and flying, turning, climbing at these settings just made the experience that much better and more realistic.
Fired up FSX and I have FSUIPC installed but on selecting Just Flight VC10 I deleted the Aileron and Elevator Settings and re-applied them to FSUIPC. Remembering the settings in X-Plane I sent the controls to FSUIPC but did not put any curves in, left them fully linear. Found that with the VC10 using aileron my yoke appeared to move further than the VC10 yoke, that is to say when mine was 45deg the VC10 was at around 30deg but soon cought up when at 90deg, if I used the Honeycomb driver this may not have occurred but flew one circuit and rotation was brilliant, pulling back on the yoke there is quite a bit of tension on the travel and it made flying the VC10 even more enjoyable and landing, I sat there gently pulling back on the flare and began to wonder when the blasted thing would touch down. Super smooth landing, but that is the VC10 for you. Next up was the A2A Simulation Constellation. Now this is an aircraft that I have had problems with, trying to fly it with the Logitech Joystick was never a pleasure as no matter what my settings were it was a devil to fly smoothly, in fact got so fed up with it that I parked it in the hanger. Not so with the yoke, it was brilliant to fly, everything about the turns were slow and positive and now I have come to the conclusion that the type of controller you use can change the way flight simming really feels. BTW, Ricks 748 flies really well with this yoke. Just had to put that one in should any-one ask what CBF Aircraft are like with it.
What of my views? I really like this yoke but also have to question Honeycomb about why they have made a yoke around the Cessna 172!!
There are many like me who have purchased this but probably don't fly the 172!! I feel that with all the switches that are labelled should really have been left unlabelled even though I will assign them to different switches, the elevator and aileron trim switches are double-pole types though can work independently so I just use one for elevator trim rather than having to use both of them........... probably not realistic but hey, it's only a sim I'm flying innit!
Hope this helps any-one who may be interested in this yoke and apologise about this review not being as other reviews found elsewhere but I just got a bit bored of tapping away here and not flying.
Regards
Nigel.
There are drivers for the Yoke which can be downloaded from the Honeycomb site for FSX and P3d but with X-Plane 11 no drivers are required. Speaking of drivers, when flying in FSX I did not use the driver and flew quite happily by just assigning Elevators, Ailerons as needed but more on that soon.
Firstly, on each aircraft I selected I had to calibrate the yoke (which makes sense) then I selected only a few buttons such as trim before taking my first flight and finding that flying left-handed was not too bad at all, in fact I began to enjoy it!! but the problem of control setup came right up and hit me when first took off and landed as it did not feel right. Cutting a long and boring fix short I just went to the Control Sensitivity Settings set pitch and roll fully left to fully linear then set Stability Augmentation fully to the right then into the main menu for controls and for pitch and roll went into the Add/Edit Response Curve set both roll and pitch to Linear, straight line no bows or creases. Worked a treat, when flaring I found just pulling back gently got me down really smoothly and flying, turning, climbing at these settings just made the experience that much better and more realistic.
Fired up FSX and I have FSUIPC installed but on selecting Just Flight VC10 I deleted the Aileron and Elevator Settings and re-applied them to FSUIPC. Remembering the settings in X-Plane I sent the controls to FSUIPC but did not put any curves in, left them fully linear. Found that with the VC10 using aileron my yoke appeared to move further than the VC10 yoke, that is to say when mine was 45deg the VC10 was at around 30deg but soon cought up when at 90deg, if I used the Honeycomb driver this may not have occurred but flew one circuit and rotation was brilliant, pulling back on the yoke there is quite a bit of tension on the travel and it made flying the VC10 even more enjoyable and landing, I sat there gently pulling back on the flare and began to wonder when the blasted thing would touch down. Super smooth landing, but that is the VC10 for you. Next up was the A2A Simulation Constellation. Now this is an aircraft that I have had problems with, trying to fly it with the Logitech Joystick was never a pleasure as no matter what my settings were it was a devil to fly smoothly, in fact got so fed up with it that I parked it in the hanger. Not so with the yoke, it was brilliant to fly, everything about the turns were slow and positive and now I have come to the conclusion that the type of controller you use can change the way flight simming really feels. BTW, Ricks 748 flies really well with this yoke. Just had to put that one in should any-one ask what CBF Aircraft are like with it.
What of my views? I really like this yoke but also have to question Honeycomb about why they have made a yoke around the Cessna 172!!
There are many like me who have purchased this but probably don't fly the 172!! I feel that with all the switches that are labelled should really have been left unlabelled even though I will assign them to different switches, the elevator and aileron trim switches are double-pole types though can work independently so I just use one for elevator trim rather than having to use both of them........... probably not realistic but hey, it's only a sim I'm flying innit!
Hope this helps any-one who may be interested in this yoke and apologise about this review not being as other reviews found elsewhere but I just got a bit bored of tapping away here and not flying.
Regards
Nigel.