(Starting a new thread to avoid hijacking the other one.)



I've always kinda wondered about that. In real planes, they don't move the stick and throttle around for lefties. If you're left handed and you want to fly, you have to figure out how to use the controls where they are (I think...).

So I guess I have a couple of questions.

1. For real pilots of combat aircraft (WWI crate or F-16...), was/is there any kind of accomodation for lefties?

2. Cockpits for combat aircraft are obviously designed for right-handed pilots. Is there some sort of discrimination/acceptance process for left-handed military pilots? Extra testing for ability to manage right-handed controls before you can even start flight training?

3. For left-handed sim pilots, do you wrestle with the question of simulating the righty-configured cockpit experience and learning to fly it the way you would have to for a real aircraft?

Have learned to fly right handed with G940. Not too difficult as long as I'm using the throttle with my left paw.
Mind you, it's probably a bit of the reason why I am crap at shooting down the enemy in flight sims.

Buying a mouse these days can be a pain in rthe 'arris as well due to all of the right handed rodents on sale.

Lefties were shot as they were inferior

Lol, no I think they were trained in WW2 (well the Germans were anyway) to shoot their riles right handed so I guess they did the same with flying.

You either learnt, and got accustomed to using your right hand as your controling hand or you were 'washed out'..
Even today in the UK armed forces, if you can't adapt to firing a rifle from the right shoulder as an infantryman, you are binned.. there is no special 'compensation' for being a 'lefty'..
By the way, I'm a lefty as well, so I adapted.. simple as!

As a private pilot you are taught to fly with your left and work throttle with right.
But there are exceptions, in the Piper Cub and other tail draggers I've flown,
you use your right hand to fly and work throttle with your left.
So it should not matter..master both.

In the CTLS it's stick with left, throttle with right; never had a problem with it.

But my Nieuport will have the throttle to the left, just as in the Champ and as God intended.

RL left-handed glider pilot here - used to have a left-handed stick (Saitek Cyborg) but forced myself to learn to fly sims right-handed (X-52) to fit with real life stick in right hand, airbrakes and gear in left.

This is a story for all you Lefties out there and it's a subject that brings back some (at the time) not so funny memories!!!!

I went to flight school in the U.S. Army as a Warrant Officer Candidate. Today they make you a Warrant Officer first but back in those days, they didn't make you a Warrant Officer until you graduated flight school (have to be an officer to be a rated aviator) and if you busted out they could do whatever they wanted with you-for three years.

Except for the ones that flew over us during the day as we ran back and forth between classes, we never saw a helicopter for the first eight weeks-we attended classes and were "tortured" by our TAC Officers whose one and only goal was to make us quit. We were putting up with all this crap to get to the flightline.

OK, done with the setup and now----the rest of the story...

We FINALLY get to the flightline for the first time to start Primary flight training and we are all pumped-this is the reason we've taken all the crap we've dealt with for the last couple of months. In walks our class commander, a Captain ( ex Warrant Officr-battlefield commission-early Vietnam) and things go downhill quickly!!! The very first words out of his mouth were "how many of you are left-handed?". Being a Lefty and knowing then that we made up around 10 percent of the world population, my instantaneous thought was that this can't be good----at all!

More than 20 percent of the students raised their hands. The Cpt. said "all of you will bust out of flight school-there's no such thing as a left-handed helicopter pilot because you fly with your right hand, not your left". Yeah, I was REALLY happy to hear THAT one! GREEEAAAAT!

A few weeks past and the Cpt. started treating those of us that still survived in a more humane manner-we could actually talk to him about non-aviation related matters. I had noticed that almost all of the Lefties had so far survived the cut and that seemed pretty strange so I asked him about his lefty comment. The Cpt. laughed out loud which was kind of a shock as the only expression we'd ever seen from him was as if someone had pee'd on his combat boots.

HE WAS LEFT-HANDED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He'd been an Instructor Pilot for about 3 years and he quickly noticed how many Pilot Candidates were left-handed so he started to ask his "famous" question of the incoming students. He said that on average, the lefties made up between 20 to as much as 35 percent of a typical class. When I asked him about that he thought it was a left hand-right brain thing(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateralization_of_brain_function#cite_note-11 and scroll down to left vs. right).

I became an Instructor Pilot in the Army and in the civilian world I've been an Instructor Pilot and FAA Check Airman since 1997. To this day I'm still looking for the lefties and they're represented in far greater numbers in the pilot world than in the general population.

Bottom line and loooooooooooooong story later-if you're a lefty, learn how to fly with your right hand because that's what the cockpit's set up for. Thank God we didn't use the Bullpup or have the righty-only shooting requirement that Trooper117 had to deal with-I couldn't hit myself in the arse with both hands and two pistols if I had to shoot right-handed ( and I shoot weekly), but nothing's more sensitive to fly than a helo and with regard to stick and rudder skills, the lefties I know are the best of the best.

I'm the most left-handed person in the world and if I could learn to fly lefthanded, anyone can!!!

I am right handed. I was never in the military, but learned to fly with left hand on the yoke/stick and right hand on throttle/prop/mixture. Became an instructor and began flying from the right seat, so had to use right hand for yoke/stick and left hand for throttle/prop/mixture. Like all things in life, one adapts and overcomes. Now I fly from either side. No big deal.

My answer to this question is "No" simply because I don't want to spend the extra time and effort to fly right handed when I can fly all of my flight sims just fine left handed. And flying right handed would just tempt me to buy a HOTAS which means spending more money than I already do on my pc gaming habit.