ORIGINAL: piper_chuck
ORIGINAL: pimmnz
Might be easier if you just forget the surface the stick operates, but lets call it 'direction' and 'speed' and 'height'. That way whatever surface controls the direction of the thing gets hooked to the stick that operates that channel, 'Speed' is then hooked into whatever stick controls the elevator, and if you are using an engine, then 'height' just gets plugged into whatever stick operates the throttle or speed control.
So, if my plane is flying straight and level at half throttle and I push the ''height'' stick forward is it going to climb? The answer is maybe a small amount, but it's largely dependent on the type of plane, wing airfoil, etc. The most noticable change is that it's going to go faster. Similarly, if I move the ''speed'' stick, the most noticable change will not be speed, it will be altitude.
It's not really a question of what the sticks do, it's a matter of how you think about it. To make an airplane climb, you'll ordinarily add throttle and give some up elevator. To descend, you reduce throttle and use some down elevator. I was taught (when learning to fly full-scale) to think of these processes as using the throttle to change altitude and the stick to control speed, and that's what I teach beginning students. It's useful because it discourages the all-too-common impulse to push the stick forward when you see that you are too high to make a good landing. Nothing good will come of doing that. But you're really using both throttle and elevator when you climb or descend, most of the time. Some full-scale pilots fly ILS approaches by using elevator to stay on the glide slope and throttle to control speed, mostly because staying on the glideslope is more important than being at a particular airspeed, and planes react faster to elevator changes than to throttle changes.
We do seem to be wandering pretty far from beginner stuff here.