When I purchased the panel and some of the gauges from a seller in The Netherlands, he gave me a Cessna yoke. Although the yoke had no PTT button, the cable was present. I had a suitable push button switch in my components stock and I soldered in on to the original wires.
I went onto Ebay and after several weeks of looking I purchased a second yoke and waited patiently while it was shipped to the Netherlands. When the yoke arrived I was a little disappointed to discover that the yoke tube was longer than the one that I already had, this was easily remedied with a ruler and a metal saw!
But, I then discovered that the tube had a different inner diameter and I had to purchase a 19mm drill bit to be able to make widen the interior of the yoke tube.
Now that I had two yokes I needed a way to link them properly. One of the requirements that I have always insisted on implementing is a dual yoke system so that I would be able to fly together with someone. A lot of people have used different manners of linking their yokes. From sliding dollies to complex linkage systems I spent a weekend trawling through countless pages before that metaphoric lamp bulb suddenly lit up: the answer was KISS (keep it simple stupid)!
Why not just go and source an original Cessna yoke ‘T’or ‘Y’ bar. I have to admit, the idea struck me while I was paging through the C172 illustrated parts catalogue looking at different aspects of the Cessna 172 construction. The ‘Y’ bar enables two yokes to be linked through a number of pulleys, it has a single pivot point and a connection point for a pushrod which is directly connected to the elevator. These last two points were very attractive from a builders point of view, I would need one potentiometer for the roll access and one for the pitch access, and they would be controlled by dual yokes. Well, you guessed it, off to Ebay again 🙂
Three weeks later my ‘Y’-bar arrived in the netherlands!
I was a Happy camper when this package arrived. I had to pay an additional 90 odd euro for import taxes and handeling but it was so cool to receive this.
