(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.

Left handed also however, I grew up with PC sims Nearly 17 years ago using right handed sticks. Even the mouse. I have no issues....well except the quadriplegia now

You should be able to fly just as well in a real aircraft with your left hand as your right hand. It really makes very little difference in my experience but others will disagree. I've found that at some point you change hands just because one gets tired and, unless you're flying BFM when you need your hands on the controls at all times, then you will tend to alternate.

If you're a left handed sim pilot then I think the Saitek Cybork or Evo (Cyborg Evo?) is set up for ambidextrous use. I had one, nice stick but I didn't really like the lightness of it.

I am so left-handed that I have rebuilt a few stick just for this purpose.

MSS FFB (changed handle to work for left)x2
MSS FFB (made a long stick, floor mounted, changed the handle to a saitek aviator handle):Long FFB

Have a half finished replica Albatros Dva grip and control column (inspired from hereAlbatros walkaround ), just need the money to by this: Universal mechanical base I think it will be strong enough.

And still my hero!

Sorry but I didn't read the thread so Im sure that I am only repeating the answer already given above:

There is no such thing as a left handed pilot. You are flying an airplane not throwing a baseball. Pilots easily fly from seat to seat, stick to yoke, etc. in 13000 hours of flying and instructing I have never once heard a pilot talk of "handed-ness". Have you ever heard of an RC pilot complaining that radio makers dont make radios for pilots with left thumbs? Sorry to be so frank but the very concept is nonsense.

Happily ambidextrous here. lol

Mostly left-handed though.

Sorry, Copter... your very concept has been declared nonsense.

He's just pointing out that, unless you are a fighter or other tandem-seat guy, you fly right or left-handed depending whether you are sitting Co or AC (or student/instructor, as the case may be). On most heavies, commercial, and private aircraft the guy in the right seat flies "right-handed" (right hand on yoke/stick), the guy in the left seat flies "left-handed."

Nonsense!

Sorry but it is. I am a mix. I throw with my left and write with my right. I currently fly with my left hand because I am in the left seat. When I was a First Officer I flew equally well (or poorly) from the right seat. In years past I flew aerobatics in side-by-side planes from the normal left seat with stick in the left hand and throttle in the middle as well as single-seat and tandem planes with the stick in the right hand with throttle on the left. If you fly long enough (even helicopters) you WILL have flown with either hand and I promise you that your brain won't know the difference. The eyes on the other hand do take some time to adjust to the different perspective of the different seat.

Actually... I know of model aircraft flyers that are left-handed and have a personalized transmitter setup. A RC transmitter basically has 2 sticks. Each stick controls 2 channels. If, for instance, you want the ailerons to be controlled by channel 4 instead of 2, you just switch the servo leads at the receiver. Most new computer transmitters can do this in the software as well.

But, as far as full-scale flying goes, this isn't quite as simple. If I fly from the right seat, I have my right hand on the yoke and the left on the throttle quadrant. If I'm in the left seat I switch to flying with my left hand on the yoke and my right hand on the TQ.
On the other hand (no pun intended ;-)) when I got my aerobatic license I trained on an aircraft with side by side cockpit and the throttle in the middle. It also had a throttle repeater on the left side console of the left seat. I actually preferred to fly right hand on stick and left on throttle in that one...

But I agree, it's not a big deal. You adapt to the options of the airplane.

This brings up an interesting related discussion: in the Bristol Fighter, the throttle is on the right-hand side of the plane, yet the trigger on the control column is obviously designed to be squeezed by the right hand. Did they typically just set the throttle at a particular setting with their right hand and then manipulate the control column with their right hand?

Basically you adapt. And that goes to both sides; left or right hand dominant.


Example; look at this picture. Copilot seats on a right side and captain seats on a left side. Caption uses left hand to fly and right hand to change throttle while co-pilot does opposite. And both can switch...at least in military world.

First off, I never said your brain would know the difference, your level of manual dexterity would be the evidence. It's obviously not a percieved or conscious thought process by the pilot, it's his demonstrated ability. I will agree wholeheartedly with the sight picture comment though. My company does full touchdown autorotations in its single engine helo's and the first thing we do when training a new instructor pilot is put him in the left seat to get the proper sight picture during the touchdown phase of the auto. P.S. best part of the job-touchdown auto's in BH206, BH407 and the AS 350

Yeah you're right about flying with both hands in a helo-big difference is if you're an equipment operator instead of a pilot, your passengers sure as hell will know which hand you're flying with!!!!

Spent two years as an Instructor Pilot in the military and the last 14 years as an Instructor Pilot/ Check Airman as a civilian so I've spent lots of time evaluating "professional" pilots -in fact alot of what I do is grade them on how well they "wiggle the sticks" during standard and non-standard flight maneuvers.

It really breaks down into two destinct groups-pilots and equipment operators. About 70 percent of the pilots are equipment operators and 30 percent of them are aviators...... Funny thing is that after doing this a while, it takes about 3 minutes to figure out what group they belong to.

I'm not a 'real' pilot so my observations don't hold any water with some of the more elite around here... but I have always said nearly the same thing as what Copter said here.

Especially when CAPTAIN Chesley Sullenbuger put his A320, with both engines out, safely down in the Hudson River with no loss of life or serious injury. Had he followed the ATC guidance he was given (to divert to some field in New Jersey), he, his crew, and all of his passengers would be dead now.

Fortunately, Sully is a PILOT. He had the nads to ignore ATC directives and FLY HIS PLANE, outside of any training or procedures, because there was no training or procedure for ditching an A320 with both engines out in a river. Everyone on that plane was damned lucky that there was a PILOT on the flight deck, not a 'systems operator.'

In my lay opinion, far too many commercial "pilots" are actually systems operators. They push buttons and moves controls in accordance to the manual and rote procedural memorization. Depart from predictable conditions and procedures, and they crash. Literally.

Examples:

Colgan Air 3407 in Feb, 2009. Aerodynamic stall due to presumed icing. But it wasn't the stall that killed all onboard. It was what the systems operators who were sitting in the pilot/first officer seats did about the stall. They did exactly what you're not supposed to do, and crashed their plane.

Air France 447 in July 2011. Apparent failure of an airspeed indicator caused autopilot failure. Fine. The autopilot can fail. That's why we put real pilots in the cockpit. Unfortunately, yet again, there were no pilots in the cockpit that night, only systems operators wearing pilot uniforms. And when the airspeed indicator failed, so did they. Not able to evaluate what was really happening to their aircraft, they (again) did exactly the wrong thing and kept pulling the nose up, worsening the stall and departure from controlled flight. There was no procedure for what was happening, so they couldn't simply follow a memorized procedure. They needed some pilot sense, and, sadly, they were fresh out.

Yeah, I know I've hijacked the thread, but I started it, so there.

Plus, as has been pointed out by a real pilot, the very concept of a left-handed pilot is:

UTTER NONSENSE!

I'll answer it this way: In the last F-4 squadron I was in, just under 50% were left handed, including me.
That was an unusually high percentage, but...
It seems that righties are almost always less ambidextrous -- I'd like to think of righties as the less capable majority.