CH Flight Controls, Flightgear and Ubuntu

I like Flightgear. It is one of the more realistic flight simulators I've flown, it runs natively with good performance on Linux, has a variety of aircraft, world wide scenery, accurate airports, VORs and ILS approaches, and is free open source software.

I like my sim to be close to flying real planes, which means a yoke, pedals with toe brakes and throttle/prop/mixture levers. A while back I tried Saitek flight controls but they didn't work. As winter is approaching, I'd like to see if I can get a good yoke and pedals to fly at home when the weather is too bad to fly for real. So I ordered a different set of controls: made by CH Products, I ordered them from My Pilot Store.

The computer you use these with shouldn't matter, since they're simple analog USB input devices. But I'll mention that since I reviewed the Saitek controls over a year ago, I have a new desktop computer. It is a 3.4 gHz i7 4770, 4 core HT (8 logical core) processor, NVidia Quadro 600 graphics, 8 GB RAM, 120 GB SSD, 1 TB HD, running Ubuntu 14.04 dual-boot with the Win 7 that Dell preloaded. The NVidia cards have fast, robust binary native Linux drivers.

SUMMARY

The CH controls work well, simple plug and play, no drivers needed, and are highly customizable in Flightgear so you don't need the customizing software that comes with them.

GETTING THEM

The Yoke has 5 axes (aileron, elevator, throttle, propellor, mixture) and 20 buttons including gear, flaps, 8 lookaround buttons, and a few extras.

The Pedals have 3 axes (rudder and individual L & R toe brakes). They come with inserts that lock the rudder axis so the toe brake can be used as an accelerator in driving simulation. Needless to say, I don't use these.

I ordered them from My Pilot Store along with some other stuff for my plane. The price was within a few bucks of Amazon's price, and there was no tax, and I could combine it with stuff I already needed.

Installation was plug and play - literally. Plug them in and use them. No drivers, no config software needed. They were instantly and automatically recognized on my Ubuntu 14.04 system, and worked out of the box since Flightgear already had built-in settings for them.

They come with software on CDs that can be used to config & customize them. I never used it so I can't comment on it. Linux provides standard open source tools that work with any joystick control. You can test them with "js_demo" and calibrate them with "jscal". The CH controls were finely calibrated out of the box and I didn't need either of these tools. Flightgear has such flexible, powerful customization options for any input devices, you don't need anything else.

HOW THEY WORK

The CH controls don't look as fancy as the Saitek ones, but they work better. I simply plugged them in and ran Flightgear. They worked the right way, the first time, right out of the box. As I was flying my DHC2 Beaver on floats, I was expecting the yoke to stop working any moment, like the Saitek mysteriously did. But to my pleasant surprise, no such thing happened with the CH controls.

The yoke has clamps to mount to a desk. My desk is 3/4" thick and just barely thick enough for the clamps. If your desktop is any thinner you'll need spacers to lock down the clamps.

Both the yoke and rudder pedals have grippy rubberish plastic pucks that stick out a mm or two and contact the floor or desk, to help hold them in place with a minimum of clamping force.

The CH yoke is self-centering, but with a smooth broad center zone quite different from the sharp detent of the Saitek yoke. This makes it more realistic, smooth and easy to use.

The throttle, prop, mixture controls are on the top right side of the yoke. Not the best position, but it works and is compact. They are laid out in the same order most airplanes use: from left to right: throttle, prop, mixture. Of course if your airplane is different you easily swap them around by editing Flightgear's input customization files (more on that below). They are all grey - they don't have the black, blue, red color coding many controls do.

The gear and flap switches are on the right side front panel, you have to reach behind the yoke to get them. This is somewhat unrealistic, but again it keeps things compact. They are up/down toggle switches which is somewhat realistic.

The elevator & rudder/aileron trim and remaining buttons are on top of the yoke handles.

The rudder pedals don't slide around when you use them like the Saitek ones did. I can think of 3 reasons:

  • The self-centering springs are lighter
  • The base is heavier
  • The grippy pucks mentioned above help hold it in place

    • Unlike the yoke, the rudder pedals do have a distinct detent to the self-centering neutral position. This is not very realistic, though it's the only way you can tell by feel when the rudder is centered in a simulator. A smooth broad center zone wouldn't work with pedals because your feet aren't as sensitive as your hands, and you normally don't lift them from the pedals when flying like you can remove your hands from the yoke, so simulator pedals have no choice but to have a firmer detent to the neutral position.

    The toe brakes are smooth and easy to trigger.

    CALIBRATION AND CONFIGURATION

    Calibration wasn't necessary. The CH yoke and pedals consistently read the center of the range in their neutral positions. If calibration were needed, Linux has a utility called "js_cal" that calibrates any analog input device. This tool is in the standard Ubuntu repos so it's easy to install.

    Flightgear has powerful and flexible means to configure any input device. It comes with built-in setup for commonly used yokes and pedals, which included both the Saitek and CH products. If you use Flightgear, you don't need to install any device config tools, like the ones that are often included with yokes and pedals.

    Yet while the yoke and pedals worked right out of the box in Flightgear, I wanted to tweak them in a few ways:

  • Change the view direction look-around buttons to scroll as you hold them down, instead of flicking about 30* in a direction with each click.
  • Make the right yoke trigger button snap back to the default forward view
  • Make the left yoke top buttons snap forward and back through alternate views (cockpit, chase plane, model, etc.)
  • Change the response curve of the rudder pedals and toe brakes. They were too sensitive as motion starts and most of the action was in the first inch of movement.
  • Change the response curve of the aileron & elevator controls. Same as with rudder and toe brakes - but the difference is more subtle.

    • Just about any flight simulator can program any button, switch or axis to do what you want. But Flightgear goes way beyond this. You can also:

  • Set a linear (multiplicative) factor to attenuate or reverse the control
  • Set an exponential (power) factor to amplify or attenuate the control response curve
  • Set a dead zone around the center position, to accommodate controls with low quality pots that give fluctuating readings around center.

    • And do any combination of above, and several other things. The possibilities are endless. All of this is done by editing an XML file. Flightgear will generate the default file for you, then you edit it as you like. The properties and settings are well documented on Flightgear's site.

    I was able to get the exact right realistic response from the rudder, brakes, aileron and elevator. Close to a real airplane - just the right amount of sensitivity and response curve. Overall, I like these CH controls and despite their pedestrian appearance I heartily recommend them over the Saitek because they work better and are less expensive.