CH Products Eclipse flight yoke

When competing rival in the flight controller market, Saitek, released their new flight yoke in late 2007, long time controller manufacturer, CH Products, had one of the first serious competitors in the budget flight controller market to contend with.  After Saitek achieved good sales of their ProFlight yoke in 2008, CH Products had to come up with something to regain some of the lost market share.  Enter the CH Eclipse Flight Yoke....

For those familiar with the CH Products line of controllers, you will notice that at first glance it appears the Eclipse yoke is not a new design, but more of an evolution from their long running and best-selling Flight Yoke USB, and to some degree this in very true.  A lot of the original features are still there, but it is perhaps the swag of new features onboard that will spark the interest of the flight sim pilot.  Let’s take a closer look......

GENERAL FEATURES

The 6 axis Eclipse yoke is designed to emulate the control yoke column found on a large number of aircraft worldwide, from the smallest Cessna to the largest airliner.  The majority of aircraft flying these days utilize a yoke or control Colum similar in shape and design to the eclipse yoke (except those aircraft with the joystick style controls of course).  The yoke itself is not a replica of any particular real world aircraft yoke, but it offers the feeling and control style one might find when flying a real aircraft.  The Eclipse can be installed and used under just about every Windows OS, so those of you stuck in the dark ages of XP can still use it.  It is a driverless installation and is simply installed by connecting the USB cable to a free USB port on your computer.  All going well, your windows software will detect the new hardware and set it up all ready to go.  The only thing you need to do after that is assign various control functions to the axes and buttons as required within your chosen software program (i.e. Flight Simulator, racing games etc.).  For the most part in FSX, the main axes and controls are pre-configured but there may be certain functions or controls you wish to change or assign to the yoke.  Information for doing this can be found in the "Information Center" contained in Flight Simulator. 

Perhaps the most notable new addition to the yoke are the spring loaded, programmable fingertip paddles located to the inside of each yoke handle.  Basically in flight sim these can be configured to act as rudder pedals, but without the toe break function.  Both Paddles are connected so as you push one paddle on its axis, the other moves outward and vice versa.  So for those that don’t have rudder pedals already, here is a fair solution to include basic rudder control onboard the Eclipse yoke.  The other notable feature on the yoke handle is the addition of buttons, wheels and switches on the front central face.  You will notice two wheel controls (one horizontal, one vertical) which are best used for controlling elevator and aileron pitch in flight.  These wheels work much like the real aircraft ones do with a rotating action.  Again, the control is very precise.  There is no trouble trimming out everything from a small Piper Tomahawk to and A380 using the eclipse trim wheels.  You may also notice another wheel on the base of the yoke.  This is a mechanical trim setting for centering the elevator shaft axis during setup or calibration of the yoke.  Underneath the horizontal trim wheel is a three-position LED selector dial.  This is used in combination with the CH Control Manager software for alternating between the control set configurations on the yoke, (i.e. the central position may allow all yoke buttons to perform a particular action, and the right position another set of actions).  Using this function allows up to 240 functions to be applied to the yoke at any one time; although trying to remember what each button does with each particular control set dial setting is the real challenge!

Saitek Pro Flight Yoke Modes - Mac - X-Plane.Org Forum

How one sets up the switches on the yoke is individual choice and most can be assigned in "buttons basic". I found the clock on the yoke and the X Plane clock don't sync, maybe because the power hear is 50hz. I set my mode switch (three position) to select Nav1, Nav2, and GPS. Two of the three clock buttons are used to start/stop and reset the X Plane clock on the instrument panel. The other buttons are utilized for autopilot, trim, and views.

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