Stupid question....

[chawbein]

...Do you use two hands to fly heavy airplanes (that are equiped with a yoke)? I've never even thought about it, and was curious.

 

[Sphincter Boy]

Any airbus drivers care to chime in?

 

[chawbein]

Oh yeah, and aircraft without fly-by-wire systems.

 

[freightdogfred]

On the Douglasaurus, fer sure........ Most douglasaurusus use cables to control flying tabs on the elevator, which in turn position the elevator to the desired angle. (The DC-10 and MD-11 the notable exceptions) Consequently, elevator control forces can be quite high, especially with a mistrimmed stab due to improper weight and balance calculations. All DC-8 pilots will rotate with their thumb on the yoke trim switch, to compensate for the lying freight forwarder. Three companies in the US have built large jets-

1) The Lockheed hydraulic company

2) The Boeing electric company

3) The Douglas cable and accumulator company

UPS sent a maintenance rep to Douglas-Long Beach to measure all the cable in a DC-8. He left in 1994, and he's not back yet......

 

[Typhoon1244]

The DC-9-14, -31, and -51 put a lot of food on my plate during my childhood. Even though I've never flown it professionally, I feel like I know the plane well through helping my father brush-up for checkrides, etc. This...

...the Douglas cable and accumulator company...

...is funny!

 

[firstthird]

The only ones I know about are the P-3 and the 737 but no, I don't use two hands most of the time. Just like most planes, one hand on the yoke an one on the power levers (thrust levers). It is called trim. If someone is using two hands they probably need to figure out where the trim wheels are and what they are used for.

There are some exceptions, of course. Boost out in a P-3 could require some two handed action but even there the preferred method is to use trim. Also, sometime two engines out on one side could be handful but having a hand on the power levers was even more important in that case. In a four engine prop like that the power levers can almost be considered another control input, for instance boost out you could lead a turn with asymmetric thrust.

In the B737 (and P-3 when we had an actual refusal speed) we use two hands to rotate because after V1 we are going flying regardless so no point to have a hand on the thrust levers.

P-3 doesn't even have electric trim (well the autopilot does but the pilots can't use it) so it is all turning the wheels by hand, the 737 on the other hand has electric trim that is so fast it is almost scary, although I've heard the 727 is even worse (louder).

Overall I would think that the size of the airplane is not at all indicative of the control forces required. If an airplane is well designed then the control forces should be managable through all phases of flight and well matched (meaning that the rudder input to get full deflection is what the pilot would expect it to be not 10 pounds of force or 150 pounds of force). I'm sure there are poorly designed planes that need a strong man to fly in certain regimes but that should be the exception.