heliVoY
Veteran
Location: NJ
| i found this on one of the jet forums ... i use fingers to pinch the sticks myself ....
Using just the thumb, or thumb and forefinger may be an easier decision with this little test. Place your hands in front of you as if they were being used for karate. Like a karate chop the edge of your fingers placed down on the table or in the air in front of you and your thumbs are vertical. Now very slowly, very slowly, attempt to make small circles with your thumbs in the air. The circle should be about the diameter of a pencil eraser, really small, really slow. You may feel a sort of clicking or intermittent small motor movement as you create the invisible circles. Reverse the direction and see if the same slight hitches also occur. Now place your forefingers on your thumbs and repeat the same action, small circles the size of a pencil eraser, executed very slowly. You'll find that the combination of thumb and forefinger smooths out the motion of creating the circles as your fingers cooperate with one another in the execution of the circle. When flying with thumbs only, it is the joystick, that becomes the forefinger. There's nothing inherently wrong with this except, that if you're using the transmitter as a counterpoint in place of your forefinger, any body language that is placed into the transmitter, is translated by the joystick, into flight directions for the aircraft. This is an interesting problem that for the most part causes little difficulty because we pilots are constantly making slight corrections intuitively with our hand-eye coordination. I have worked out a solution to making my own flying more accurate and comfortable for myself. This little test can help determine how serious these corrections are for yourself. I have found younger fliers have greater small motor skills than guys like myself who just turned 60. Experience generally will correct for all of these small mistakes or adjustments. I've just worked out a way to remove as many as I can from get-go. This is the test that I've created to explain why I use thumb and forefinger to creat my small moves, the small circles, that are a great part of my flying corrections. It's the same effect that makes writing with a pen or pencil so smooth your Thumb and forfinger seem to be a natural team. It's only when you need to use four of your five fingers to hold the transmitter that we switch to thumbs only. Remove that from the issue and how you hold the sticks can be approched differently.
Voy |
