It doesn't matter if one uses the thumb or several fingers to hold the stick, they will still bang or twitch the sticks. It might slow them down a bit, but they have to be shown while the plane is in the air how slow and smooth stick movement should be and that's normally almost impossible to do when the instructor is using a buddy-box. The only way to do that using the buddy-box is if another instructor is standing between the student and the instructor holding the master buddy-box.

When I was first learning, I was assured that you could fly smoother using thumb and forefinger, but when I went to my current instructor, I was shown that it doesn't matter which way I fly, if I don't know how to properly move the sticks. I finally found out that I had all the time in the world to move the stick to make a turn and that I didn't have to move the stick very often because once the wings were banked over, the plane would make a beautiful turn mostly on it's own.

nascarjoe