Honeycomb Aeronautical Alpha Flight Controls Yoke & Switch Panel

After having purchased the CH yoke twice over the last 20 years and two different flight sim home built setups, I had finally grown weary of the plastic and spring technology. CH was durable and did it's job, but it's definitely showing it's age in this day where so many people are putting out superior new tech.Decided to add this to my setup, and you can really feel a night and day difference. Controls are precise and smooth, and the overall feel of the product, it's range of motion, and lack of thick, dated springs is noticeable almost immediately. I got my private pilot certificate five months ago, and have flown over 115 hours in the last year and wanted something to more closely resemble what I would expect to feel in a real airplane. While you'll never quite get an accurate representation - this is far superior to the CH yoke I had been drumming on the last year and a half.It's expensive, but it should last a long time, seems very durable, and made of high end material. Buttons and switches feel a little cheap for the money, but the overall throw of the yoke, and range of motion more than make up for this minor oversight.

Bottom Line Up Front: Excellent product! I think it is much better than the other popular yokes at/around this price point though it's slightly more expensive. I've owned this yoke now for over 5 months and I've used it often. No issues at this point in terms of reliability.Discussion:I've been flight sim guy for off / on 10+ years. There are 4 fairly popular flight yokes that I've seen on the market..CH Products Yoke, Saitek Yoke, Red Bird Yoke and this yoke from Honeycomb--the Alpha. All are good products for flight simulation.The Redbird Yoke is by far the most expensive and is somewhat in another league in terms of what you get--I know these yokes are used in FAA approved flight simulators around the world and are much more expensive than the other 3...but given the FAA credentials may be worth it if you are looking for this.I own the other 3 yokes--hands down the Alpha Yoke is by far the best of these. The Saitek yoke is a good looking yoke and the material feel is good (better quality plastic than CH Yoke). Also, it has more buttons and extra functions like timer, etc....which are useful and handy. However, it has a critical flaw in that there is a detent at center making smooth flight control very difficult for me. The control of sim felt very unnatural compared to flying real airplanes (I started to notice it more when I began taking real world flight lessons--I could not use the Saitek anymore). I then purchased the only other option at the time--the CH Yoke. The CH Yoke feels has a better control feel -- smoother inputs...no annoying detent making it easier to control the sim and better represent real world flying to me. However, the plastics are very cheap feeling texture which does detract from the experience. That said, I used the CH because it did not suffer from the detent issue like I felt in the Saitek which made flying simulator much better for me.Once Alpha yoke came to market, I decided to give it a chance because of reviews from other flight sim users. The Alpha costs ~$100 more than both the CH and Saitek but it is well worth it in my opinion because there is no compromise. It represents the best of both worlds in smooth flight control feel as well as very good construction, very good quality plastics and the price--though higher than CH and Saitek--is worth the no compromise in my opinion and at a price point which is very fair considering what you get. Also the Alpha has greater range of motion (180 degrees vs the other 2 that don't have this). It's just better yoke in all areas over the other two I own.other notes: The mounting is easy but it can be hard to get off desk (depending on your desk material) if installed for a long time due to the sticky material on base of the yoke. However, sticking base is easy thing to prevent (keep the thin piece of plastic protector which comes to protect it on the base and this has helped me prevent to sticking when I want to remove it). All and all this is an excellent product.

This is the best quality yoke for the money that you can get. The build quality is excellent, so are the materials used. You can feel the quality when using this. It's unfortunate that Honeycomb Aeronautical are undergoing some sort of internal financial problems & management struggle within the company right now, and the future of the company is very uncertain. There is unfortunately no real guarantee of product support going forward with this (we'll have to see what happens with the company over the next year or two if they survive that long). With that in mind, these have a very low failure rate and I'd still recommend this over any of the other yokes which are either built like fisher price toys or eye watteringly expensive. This is still by far the best value out there. It's currently unknown whether Honeycomb Aeronautical will even continue to exist so I would say you should snatch one of these up while you still can if you're looking for a good flight sim yoke. Also get your hands on a Bravo throttle quadrant as well if you can (they are mostly sold out everywhere at this point), the quality of that is also exceptional for the cost.

If you have the means, I strongly suggest you pick one of these up. They are simply the best quality components made for flight simulation.

This was a gift for my son and he loves it with his Fightsimulator game. It is of impressive quality - it too a little while to get fully working properly and to have it work well, you need all the other accessories. The movement, smoothness of the controls, and mapping to the in-game features is impressive.It was quite expensive, but the quality is so great, it would be hard to see it being priced less expensively.