Flight simulator maker Redbird is offering flight simulator controls for the popular Cirrus SR-22 and SR-20 singles. The offering is in the form of two products, a side yoke that can be placed by itself away from the rest of the controls and a throttle quadrant (coming soon) both of which replicate the functionality and look and feel of the real deal.
As you might know, in creating its SR-models 20 years ago, Cirrus wanted to do a side controller, but it went with a side controller that’s not a joystick style model but one that is very much a small yoke mounted on the side. Like a conventional control yoke, it moves in the two axes independently, so you pull it back, instead of tilting it as you do with a joystick, and you rotate it side to side to use the ailerons. It’s an odd approach that works really well and takes approximately six seconds to get use to in the air while freeing up the space in front of you. Redbird’s yoke, the Alloy YK2, nails the look and the feel of it, even integrating the trim and switches atop the handle.
The power controls on a Cirrus are less unusual but still unconventional. There’s no prop control (at least no direct prop control or prop lever). Instead, the power lever controls the pitch of the prop through an ingenious mechanical linkage that Continental came up with a million years ago but that never took off, so to speak. Cirrus resurrected it and pilots, 8,000+ Cirrus models later, clearly love it. The Redbird product, called the TH4, which the company says is coming soon, replicates all of that, down to the friction lock on the side of the console, the TOGA button on the side of the throttle lever and the fuel selector and boost pump.
The new products aren’t cheap. The YK2 goes for $999, and the TH4, while there’s no price given for it, won’t be cheap either. But Cirrus pilots will delight in the availability of controls that put them, look, feel and functionality, into the cockpit of their favorite plane.
