Is CH Yoke very stiff trim wheel "working as intended"?

[kent.black]

New to the hobby, not a pilot, so just checking: Bought a CH yoke, and I find the trim wheel to be extremely hard to move. Not quite rip-skin-off-thumb stiffness, but getting close. Is this normal and expected? "Stiff" to avoid accidentally moving I could see, this is more like "maybe use both hands" stiff.

I've already read elsewhere about CH HW mods, e.g. using lighter springs and greasing the inner workings, but I've only had this yoke 2 days and will wait until I'm sure the HW holds up. If this is yet another minor modification, then I'll file it away for next month.

TIA

[Morag]

Is this the wheel on the main body of the yoke? That's not a trim wheel it's a mechanical adjuster for calibrating the elevator. You just use it to centre that axis when you run the calibration for the yoke then don't touch it again. It's needed because the centre point of the CH axis is intentionally 'loose', there's no centre 'notch' to the movement.

Some CH Yoke have a trim wheel on the yoke part which you can assign to trim control in the sim. This type of wheel shouldn't be very hard to turn.

[kent.black]

Well, that's interesting - thank you for that! Third pass through the documentation on the TODO list. ;)

I take it there is no "trim wheel" on the 200-615 (lower-end) yoke? Or the rocker button on the left handle (button 11-12) is supposed to be "elevator trim", but did not seem to be bound correctly by default.

Got it. Reset all defaults, recalibrated, and elevator trim was not set to anything for the yoke, so fixed that and everything is behaving much nicer. Thanks!

[Morag]

Originally posted by kent.black:

Well, that's interesting - thank you for that! Third pass through the documentation on the TODO list. ;)

I take it there is no "trim wheel" on the 200-615 (lower-end) yoke? Or the rocker button on the left handle (button 11-12) is supposed to be "elevator trim", but did not seem to be bound correctly by default.

Got it. Reset all defaults, recalibrated, and elevator trim was not set to anything for the yoke, so fixed that and everything is behaving much nicer. Thanks!

You can't rely on the default assignments being anything sensible so just set the buttons to whichever functions are most useful to you. I have the Eclipse model that comes with two trim wheels which are not all that tbh, they aren't axis wheels, they just send a series of button presses to the sim when you turn it - the thumb rocker switch will work just as well.

[TextRich]

I have an Eclipse yoke too, and Morag is correct. That stiff and sharp wheel is simply for the physical movement of the yoke itself. I have tried the 200-615 model at flight sim conventions and it pretty much works the same as the Eclipse. The Eclipse is just prettier and comes with those horizontal and vertical trim wheels. :-) Sometimes I fly using CH's FighterStick (depending on the plane being used) and use one of the thumb switches for trim instead.