It's a simple matter of "Where do you want the nose to go?".
Even the rudder action is to direct the nose.

As long as you never fly someone elses plane, you can do what you want. Actually, I read from a discussion about Mode 1-4 that some expert RC pilots will have up go up and down go down. I can't really remember why but if those TOC people do it, why not you?

You just have to be extra careful when you fly someone else's plane.

DBCherry - after all this time of correcting me in posts (you are definitely a wise man), I am going to offer you something to think about. "Pull Up" I'm sure is derived from the controls of the aircraft, not the other way around. :-) Cheers!

I think it`s more natural to pull back for up and push forward for down; use the example of lifting something off the ground. You pull on it, and if you were putting, say, a helium balloon on the ground, you would push it down.

There is another question that has me curious though. Why is that the Captain sits on the left of the aircraft, and in single pilot aircraft, also on the elft.

My theory is that flight was invented in the US, and they drive from the LHS of the car. Nobody can confirm or deny that, and I haven`t done a web search to see if it throws up anything.

Now that theory goes down the drain with helicopters. In multi crew helicopters, the Captain sits on the right, and single crew helicopters, he still sits on the right. I think Igor Sikorsky invented the helicopter, but I`m not sure, and he was Russian. Do they drive on the RHS of the road in Russia? Not sure as I haven`t been there.

JapanFlyer, I think it makes most sense for the right hand to be controlling the more critical of controls since most people are right handed. For this reason I think that almost all single seat or tandem seat planes and helicopters have the yoke on the right (or middle for right hand use) and throttle on the left. As to why the captain in an airplane sits on the left? I have no real clue. Maybe he was never meant to fly the plane... more just process the flight engineers comments, monitor all the vitals and direct the co-pilot where to go. Or maybe back when controls were much heavier, the Captain would need both hands on the wheel and throttle was controlled by the co-pilot with his left while his right hand was free to help out. Who knows?

Fourstroke,
I wondered about that when I wrote it, but I think instinct would still dictate that you yell "pull up" if the plane were diving (full scale), regardless of what stick action it took to achieve that.
Dennis-

1. That's just how they started doing it in the early days.
2. Feels right.
3. Just the way it is.
Now, does anyone know where "balls to the wall" came from?
How about "balls out"?
"The whole nine yards"?

I only skimmed the responses here so maybe someone has already answered this but elevator does not really control "up" and "down"; it controls speed. So in that sense it moves the same as the throttle: stick forward to go faster, stick back to go slower. If you think about it, which way does the nose have to go to slow down and flair for landing? For a fixed throttle setting if you pull back on the elevator the plane may zoom up but you will start losing speed and eventually stall and the plane will fall out of the sky. To go faster and maintain constant altitude you have to push forward on the stick to gain speed and forward on the throttle to maintain altitude. So the arrangement is perfectly logical if you get away from misconception that the elevator controls up and down. I think R/C modelers miss this because we tend to fly at full throttle all the time and just use the elevator to zoom up and down to keep the plane in sight just like we only use alierons to turn.

One picture is worth etc.etc.

(doesnt apply to RC particularly) but imagine sitting in a jet and having to push forward on the stick to keep going up at 9G's and also having to pull back on the stick when your hurtling toward the ground nose first being pulled to the front of the plane

simple but true hehe

You're right XenX. As I said in my first post, you want the "G's" to help you get OUT of the maneuver, not fight you

Orientation is now a convention adopted as a consequence of US LHD unfluence as per your theory, eventually becoming de rigueur through US virtual total domination of airliner manufacturing industry after WWII.

Not absolutely sure why the US didn't adopt the same parochiality with relocating heli controls & orientation, but helis fly command from the right because that's the way the controls are orientated if used in the natural sense. eg: throttle/collective controlled by left hand.

With few exceptions single pilot 'stick' aircraft fixed wing or rotary have the controls orientated to be flown with the command pilot controlling the primary flight controls with his right hand (and feet), throttle with the left. A contemporary exception possibly being some airbus industry FBW types with the 'stick' such that it is, located on the left possibly to keep with contemporary airliner convention and implementation ergonomic?

Just like in Africa, they drive in the 'middle' of the road in Russia...where roads actually exist.

forestroke, I understand what you say, but back in the early days of aviation, the Captain, who sits on the left, did ALL the flying, controlling the aircraft through the yoke with his left hand, and using his right for the throttles. In some countries, the less enlightened ones like third world countries and that strangely includes Japan, it`s still the same with Japanese Captains.

In Airbus aircraft, the control stick is still on the left for the Capt and right for the FO. It is fly by wire technology, and the A320 was almost built without throttles; they were only installed to keep the pilots happy. Probably something less offensive to play with.

The throttles could easily have been put on the left at no weight penalty for an extra set, and the control stick on the right armrest, and vv for the FO.

It`s something that has often intrigued me, and the only plausible conclusion I can draw is that the earliest designers of multi crew aircraft adopted the LHS steering wheel following car manufacturers.

Sorry to sidetrack the thread.

Didn't want to get into this disscusion here. Yes the throttle, or power controls altitude, and elevator controls attitude, or speed.
Think everyone agrees that (for this thread) the stick motion is relating to "up and down".

ElTigre- That was all well and good for somebody in a prone position, to control their plane by shifting body weight or moving a cradle, but you'll notice even the Wrights quit using that system early on once they (or whomever) put a proper seat in the plane and decided to sit to fly instead of lie down. Technology and invention sometimes sort of direct themselves (form follows function). Who knows, they, (Wrights, Bleriot, et al) may have sat and daydreamed every conceivable way to control a plane, maybe even mocking-up some of these ideas, and then finally settling on the system we use today because it worked better than anything else.

The industry has to standardize somewhere. Can you imagine if , say Boeing used "Stick forward, climb, stick back, dive" and Douglas used the opposite, and Convair had a third system (whatever it might be), what would it be like to be a commercial pilot who might fly a plane built by each manufacturer and have to dapt to totally foreign controls each time he changed planes? Would you want to ride with them?

For anyone out there who wants to reverse their servos, and reprogram their Tx to reverse the stick functions, go ahead. You're the only one who flies that plane with that system , and like someone else said, if you learn that way, it becomes the norm. Personally, I like the system as is .

XenX, Minnflyer - Actually the G-forces that you are talking about would not really help you that much. Those G forces are not on the same axis as the stick. Actually they would be pushing you down into the seat. Hence the G-suits are for the bottom of the body to ensure that all your blood doesn't go to your legs. Thus the throttle movement (forward is faster) does seem to follow that logic. The stick, though, less so.

In fact, back in the olden days, I'll bet that the force of gravity (which was stronger then) would override any maneuver even the powered dive. The only exception may be the powered veritical dive, which in the olden days would've at most lasted what 5 seconds (if truly the acceleration of the plane from a stall could surpass 1G until a top speed of around 150km).

I imagine the largest G affecting the stick would be during take off when the plane is moving from a standstill to takeoff velocity. Wouldn't the worse thing to do be to pull up and stall? Hmmm...

JapanFlyer - that is peculiar... and I like Boeings... :-)

ps. I was kidding about that gravity being stronger stuff! hehe

I'm sure that you could train yourself to fly the opposite to what is convention, i.e., push forward to climb, but you would probably have to start doing that from the beginning; to attempt to change from the conventional, i.e., opposite, mode would be extremely difficult.

Many years (about 18 I think) ago, a Westwind bizjet crashed on take off from Sydney airport. It took off late evening into a black, but clear, sky. It was revealed that the guy in the right hand seat was a checker, and had a history of acts of great bravado. Soon after take off, he simultaneously failed the primary attitude indicator of the guy in the left hand seat, a Captain under check, and simulated failure of one engine. The turn and bank indicator, a simple instrument, had been working in the reverse sense for some time, and was the first backup the Captain would have looked at. He rolled the aircraft inverted, and it dived into the sea from about 8,000 feet. An interesting fact emerged in the investigation, and that was that the turn and bank indicator was not a required instrument in the aircraft, but if it was fitted, the maintenance schedule required it to be working correctly, not an unreasonable requirement.

As part of the investigation, the local regulating authority had a number of Air Force crews, eight or nine I think, fly a simulator on which the turn and bank indicator was rigged to operate in the reverse sense.

The sequence they flew was exactly as the Westwind had, and they were briefed thoroughly that the turn and bank would be operating in the reverse sense. They were also briefed that the primary attitude indicator would be failed during the turn. All crews but one crashed.

That's an indication of just how ingrained the response becomes, and how difficult it is to untrain oneself.

On that note, I've known many experienced pilots that have inadvertently "pulled up" into the ground during an inverted manuever. All because of some distraction, either another plane nearby, someone crashing and he turning to look and losing his concentraion, or something silly. That last example happened to the owner of a LHS.

Another full scale story on that very point. Over twenty years ago, a young (21 on the day) Air Force Mirage pilot was celebrating his birthday, and barrel rolling at about 300 knots and a couple of hundred feet over the airstrip at Williamtown, just north of Sydney. He pulled instead of pushing at the end of the manouver, and the biggest piece they found was about as big as a dollar. Just one small lapse of concentration is all it takes.

The cost in model flying might not be quite so dramatic, but it's easy to do.

There was a dramatic shift in Air Force operating philosophy after that incident. There had been more aircraft lost in screwing around than in combat over a couple of wars.

"Pull back to go up" does NOT work when inverted.......[X(]

In a similar vein....

one of the significant challenges for Spitfire pilots was a simple engine "upgrade". Essentially, the MkXII spitfire was a MkV with a Griffon engines rather than the Merlin. They rotated in opposite directions. Thus, the torque on the MkV's which pulled the plane to the left on take-off was reversed to the right on the Griffons. Pilots had to "re-learn" the habits of applying rudder on take-off, and there are stories pf people being on leave during the switch from MkV to MkXII, and no-one telling (re-training) them of the change in engine rotation. Stories exist that include crashes, and other wierder things like people taking off at 90degrees to the runway.... (people had the habit of holding in right-rudder on the MkV's, and this just perpetuated the problem with the XII's).

Anyways, food for thought.

gus

I once met a flier who was a farmer and taught himself to fly in his hay field. He held the transmitter vertically in front of himself and pushed the stick up for up control and down for down control. Seems logical if you hold the transmitter vertical. Now if you hold it horizontal, it seems more natural to pull back for up.

"Balls to the wall." In the old days, especially on multi-engine airplanes, the tops of the throttles had ball-shaped knobs on them. The bulkhead in front of the pilots was the firewall. In an emergency situation, pilots would try to get a little extra power by trying to push the throttles as far forward as possible. He was trying to push the balls (throttles) to the firewall (wall).

I might be wrong on "the whole 9 yards," and you navy guys may need to correct this and I apologize for possible wrong terminology, but on an old sailing ship, the mast had 3 yard arms (yards). In nearly calm conditions, they would add an extension yard arm out from each main yard, giving a total of 9 yard arms. The maximum sail was with all 9 yards employed, hence, going all out was using "the whole 9 yards."

Ed,

Good! "balls to the wall" explaination is correct sir! "The whole nine yards" is from something else, as I've been told....anyone else?
"Balls out"?

The first one with all three correct answers in one post wins a set (2 or 3) of wheels, ( I've got a lot of them, both in foam, and rubber, and in various sizes, I'll try to send the ones you request) sent to you, post paid.

Hmmm...

whole nine yards (Bottom line - no exact origin....)
Nine yards is believed to be the amount of material need to create a
nun’s habit, or as some would claim, a man’s three-piece suit. Nine
yards is the length of a maharajah's ceremonial sash, the maximum
capacity of a West Virginia ore wagon, the volume of trash that a
standard garbage truck can carry, the entire length of a hangman's
noose, the distance you would have to run from a cell block to the
outer wall in order to survive a jail break, the actual length of a
standard bolt of cloth, the length of a burial shroud, the size of a
soldier's backpack, the length of cloth needed to make a kilt, the
number of yards in a ships sails, or that nine yards refers to some
memorable event in the game of American football (that no one seems to
recall specifically).

There are, of course, many others that I have not mentioned and you
can recreate my search strategy to find dozens more. My favorite, and
frankly the most plausible modern explanation, comes from the more
recent 1940’s, when, as you know, American culture was rife with slang
and “old sayings”, many of which originated from World War II military
vernacular. As the explanation goes, the phrase “the whole nine yards”
first gained fame among fighter pilots who employed the use of .50
caliber machine guns onboard their planes. The gun belt for this
weapon is said to have been exactly 27 feet long, so if a pilot was
really determined to hit a specific target he might completely
discharge his weapon in the enemy’s direction, thus giving his enemy
“the whole nine yards”.

(Reference http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=138922)

Balls to the Wall
Pushing the throttle with ball-knobs) as far forward as possible toward the firewall.... (as pointed out by Ed.)

Balls Out
Balls Out
Refers to an early design of engine governor, in which a pair of masses (balls) spun at an increasing rate as engine speed increased. Centrifugal acceleration threw the masses outward, so "balls out" refers to maximum possible engine speed.
(Reference: http://docmeyer.freeservers.com/trivia.htm)

Thanks

gus

Ok? OK? - ( moderator, sorry to get really off track ) but where did that one come from?

Someone told me that it came from a guy called Otto Krause who used to be the QC man at the finish of the ford truck production line way back in the early days, - he used to inspect the chassis, and if it was good, he signed it "OK".

BTW, I think MINNFLYER gave the simplest logical explanation to the stick back question.