New Sonex High Wing Design

[gtae07]

A center stick is convenient for sure, but it likely deprives at least one of the occupants from using their preferred hand to fly it. If you have a right-handed instructor and a left-handed student... then no problem. If you have two right-handed people on board then one of them is going to have a harder or less intuitive experience.

Absolute non-issue as long as you have two working arms and hands. I'm right-handed and the majority of my flying (stick or yoke) has been with my left hand. Same with driving--most of us here drive on the right and if you drive a manual, well, you're going to be using that right hand to shift. At most it takes a couple flights to get used to it.

One advantage to the stick in your non-dominant hand is that writing and working avionics can be a bit easier.

 

[rtfm]

Absolutely agree. Fly with non-dominant hand, leaving dominant hand for writing, fiddling with radio etc. For me it's a no-brainer...

 

[PatrickW]

I've had to climb in and out of planes enough to know that twin sticks are a pain in the butt

One of my current airplanes has a center stick (a Zenith CH-601XL-b). While it's very comfortable most of the time, the center stick is quite limiting in flight.

The problem with a center stick (in a side-by-side airframe) is that it locks your right hand in place (assuming you're flying left seat). It is not possible to "reach over" and use your left hand on the center stick when you're strapped in. Further, anything on the right side of the panel must be within reach of your left hand (which requires an awkward "arm crossing"). Things to the right side that are reachable when seated on the ground become entirely unreachable when strapped in.

My next airplane will have dual sticks.

- Pat

 

[Pops]

I am mostly ambidextrous. Can do most anything with my right or left hand. I do mostly write with my right hand but also can with my left hand. I almost lost my right arm and didn't have the used of it for 7 years, but made out OK except for just having the use of one arm.

Never had any problem when flying from the left seat reaching across with my left hand to the center stick while strapped in. Same from flying from the right seat reaching with my right hand to the center stick. On a normal approach and landing I would be reaching across several times with the flap handle between the seats and a center Piper style overhead elevator trim crank. Throttle on left side of panel. 42" wide cockpit. Flew the F12 about 5 years and 750+ hrs.

 

[CAVU Mark]

I always thought the Cessna Skycatcher was a cool yoke/stick solution. Granted there may be some extra weight but the convenience is worth it.

 

[stanislavz]

Mine two or 5 cents. I was thinking of similar approach for an composite airplane (high wing cantilever) But for two seater side-by-side, placing main spar is a killer. Or it will make your visibility poor, or it will ask you to make your frontal area ~ 5-6% higher. Ie - absolute minimum cross section is kind of 40'x40" inches or 1x1 m. But it is much much better to have ir like 44"x44" or 1.1x1.1 m with rounded edges at 5" radius. More interesting comes then you try to put your main load (two meat bags) close to cg.

Also - big killer is placement of landing gear - here is under ankles which suggest me, that meat bags are being used to counter balance nose weight. This in total brings us to situation / feeling like driving a car from rear seat.

But conclusion was, that strutted wing allow to have 44"x44" fuselage around all of you "meat bag" , especially if fuselage top line is tide not to wing bottom line, but it is higher. Like this :

And then it is possible to place head before rear spar and have plenty of head room and normal forward visibility. Wing is thinner - 12-13.5 % for strutted is on safe side, while on cantilever 15% is minimum and 18% needed sometimes too. Same goes to fuselage structure - all loads are carried via struts to seat support. Again seat are seating 80-100% of useful load..