CH Yoke USB & CH Pro Pedals USB Review - By Mark "Frugal" Bush
Yoke Features:
Windows 98/2000/XP ME, iMac, or Mac (with USB port*) compatible.
New ergonomic designed yoke movement without a center detent allowing the ultimate in control.
5 axes of control including, pitch, roll, throttle lever, propeller lever, and mixture lever.
20 button functions including, 2-way gear switch, 2-way flaps switch, 8-way hat switch, two 2-way rocker switches, and 4 push buttons.
Precision adjustment wheel for precise electronic centering.
7 foot cable: easy setup.
USB provides true Plug & Play and greater speed and accuracy.
Three-year limited warranty, made in the USA.
Compatible with Pro Pedals USB
Rudder Features:
Sliding motion of forward/backward gives rudder input for the "yaw" axis.
Heel-toe motion gives differential toe braking control.
Three axes of control
Plane or car simulator control
Seven foot cable
Three year warranty
USB interface
Toe Brakes tested and fully functional in the "Fly!" flight simulator (PC Version), Microsoft Flight Sim 2000 and Flight Sim 2001.
The CH Flight Sim Yoke USB comes in a sturdy box that should easily survive abuse in transit. Included inside the box you will find the USB yoke, clamping hardware, installation guide, and a CD with demos and drivers. The rudder box contains the rudders, the installation guide and CD, and a pair of chocks to lock the rudder axis in order to use the toe brakes as pedals in driving games. Both the Yoke and rudders are high quality. My only gripe being that the clamping mechanism requires a pretty thick desktop and even fully tightened 2 was around an inch too large for the shelf on my Ackers Barnes cockpit. I solved this problem by wedging several old floppy disks between the desk and the clamps.
Installation
There's not much I can really say about the installation, it was just a case of plug in and go. I plugged the yoke into a usb slot and Windows immediately recognised it and installed drivers without even asking me for the driver disk. This was then repeated by an equally simple install of the rudders. For a lot of users this is all you need to do. The Control Manager Software provides a lot of extra programmability, but as most sims will allow you to assign the buttons and axis in game, the Control Manager could be considered an optional extra. Rather than install the version of Control Manager on the disk I downloaded the latest version from the CH Products web site.
Configuration and Programmability
The programmability of this kit is simply phenomenal. There is pretty much nothing you could want these to do that they can't do. At the simplest level the buttons and axis can be assigned as Direct X buttons within the sim. Most modern sims allow you to do this with ease. The Control Manager software allows you to fairly simply assign key presses to each of the buttons, so it is still possible to get the yoke to do exactly what you want even if your sim doesn't allow you to remap the controls from within. The real power is in the new Control Manager Scripting language (CMS). CMS is an extremely flexible and powerful language that will allow you to do practically anything you could possibly want to do with your Yoke. CMS allows you to manipulate axis, control timers, perform logical operations, assign macros to buttons and a whole lot more. If you can think of a use for the Yoke CMS will probably let you do it. However this power comes at a price, CMS is not very friendly and requires some programming skill, even some relatively simple operations can seem quite complex if you are not used to similar scripting languages. For instance here is a script to make button 2 act as an instant trim.
SCRIPT
IF( NOT JS1.B2 ) THEN // If Button 2 is released then
CMS.A1 = JS1.A1 + A1; // add the X offset to the stick X value
CMS.A2 = JS1.A2 + A2; // and add the Y offset to the stick Y value
ENDIF
SEQUENCE
WAIT( JS1.B2 ); // Wait until Button 2 clicks
A1 = JS1.A1 - 128; // Calculate the X offset and save it in A1
A2 = JS1.A2 - 128; // Calculate the Y offset and save it in A2
ENDSEQUENCE
ENDSCRIPT
Far from rocket science, but not exactly simple either. Personally I felt the documentation could have been a lot better in this area too. Fortunately for normal usage the yoke is extremely user friendly. It is only when you want to do clever scripting that it becomes complicated. Most users will never need to touch CMS, but it is nice to know it is there for those feeling a little adventurous. Another great feature of the Control Manager is that it can combine the Yoke and Rudders (along with any other CH devices) into a single windows controller. Many older sims only work with one controller and so don't like a separate yoke and rudder. Control Manager can fool Windows into seeing the Yoke and rudder as a single device, thus allowing it to work flawlessly in titles that don't support multiple controllers.
Flight Sim Performance
I was very pleased to find that Flight Simulator 2002 is already preconfigured for the Yoke, in fact the configuration was pretty much perfect with the throttle, prop pitch and mixture assigned to the correct levers, the left side thumb buttons controlling views in and out, the front finger button controlling the parking brake and the rocker controlling the elevator trim. The right hand rocker controls the rudder trim, with the POV hat controlling the views and the finger button displaying the kneeboard, cycling through its pages and finally hiding it. Finally the 2 way switches on the front of the unit raise and lower the flaps and gear. The trim wheel also gives fine control of the elevator trim. As I use the trackIR for views and never use the kneeboard I changed the right finger button to open and close the ATC window, and I used Control Manager to get the POV hat to send the numbers 1 - 8 (the POV hat is an 8 way hat). FS2002 was also already configured for the rudder axis so all I had to do was tell FS2002 to use the toe breaks and I was ready to go.
The difference with the CH gear was immediately apparent; the differential toe braking made a huge difference during taxi. Tight turns are very easy with the toe brakes. Once on the runway I throttled up and started rolling, it was very easy to keep the nose on the centreline thanks to the responsiveness of the rudders. Climbout felt really good with the Yoke, far more immersive than using my stick. Once I reached my desired cruising altitude of 2000 ft I reduced the throttle, prop pitch and mixture using the levers and trimmed for level flight at 120 mph using a combination of the trim rocker and the trim wheel. I then tried some steep turns, compared to when using a stick these turns were really easy, I was able to maintain a constant altitude without any real effort and the rudders allowed me to keep the turns co-ordinated. Landing was also made easy by the yoke and thanks to the toe brakes I was able to slow down and turn off the runway at the first available exit.
The Yoke massively increased my enjoyment of Flight Simulator 2002, partly because it is much easier to fly with the yoke, but mainly because of the extra immersion afforded by using the yoke rather than a joystick. In fact I enjoyed using the yoke so much that I finally got my PPL in FS2002, something that I hadn't been motivated to do until now.
The CH Yoke USB is also perfectly suited to flying bombers in IL2 Forgotten Battles. I did have to go into IL2's HOTAS configuration in order to configure the buttons and several of the axis but this didn't take long. My only disappointment was that IL2 FB does not allow you to assign the mixture to the CH Yoke's analogue mixture lever. This is the fault of the sim rather than they yoke and fortunately you can use CMS to make the mixture lever control the mixture setting with a little bit of scripting.
Racing Games Performance
Next I tried Nascar Racing Season 2003 and Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2. The yoke performed really well as a steering wheel giving very smooth control. I didn't like using the Toe Brakes for gas and brakes though, even with the supplied chocks keeping the rudder axis from moving. Because the Toe Brakes pivot around the centre of the foot bringing the heel up I found them very uncomfortable to use in driving sims. As an experiment I assigned gas to the forward movement of the yoke and brakes to the backwards movement. This worked surprisingly well and became instinctive very quickly making this a very good option for driving sim enthusiasts without the floor space for pedals. In fact I found driving this way so intuitive that if the yoke had force feedback I'd consider using it instead of my steering wheel all the time.
Conclusion
The CH Products Flight Sim Yoke USB and Pro Pedals compliment FS2002 perfectly. As well as adding immersiveness when flying any aircraft normally controlled by a Yoke, they give smooth responsive controls. The Yoke has 5 axis, 20 buttons and a trim wheel, more than enough to keep your hands off the keyboard for most of the flight. The addition of analogue Toe Brakes on the rudders gives you great control on the ground. Thanks to the Control Manager and CMS you have an unsurpassed level of flexibility and programmability.
At $149.95 each for the Yoke and rudders the retail price for the full set is just under $300 which seems fairly steep. The street price tends to be closer to the $230 for the set and when you consider the quality and flexibility that is a very fair price. You will not find a better yoke at a comparable price, in fact you will be hard pushed to find better for double the price.
