In article et,
Frijoles writes
I laughed out loud at your decription of the Harrier stick. It took a few
minutes for me to figure out how to hold the bloomin' thing when I first saw
it.

An octopus would probably get on okay with it...

Over time I came to love flying the jet even with all its British
peculiarities (among the others -- pushbuttons for "undercarriage" extension
and retraction).

The early Spitfires featured a lever that moved 90 degrees to operate
the undercarriage hydraulics, but it invited disaster. The lever had to
be swung downwards and then it would automatically snap itself back into
the locking notch. The pilot had to resist the temptation to help the
lever back into the locking notch as this cut off the hydraulic pressure
while the wheels were still coming down. Quite a few novices did try to
land with wheels hardly out of the housings.

So the buttons are there to make things simple!

I too wondered about the circle thing watching "B.O.B." the other night.
Seems its just something one got used to over time.

SNIP old stuff

A fellow air cadet and I raided a fire dump when staying at an RAF
station (MANY years ago). We got the control column tops out of a
Meteor trainer destined for fire practice - I got the 'modern' handle
and my pal got the WWII spade grip. Wish we'd done it the other way
around now...

Cheers,

Dave

--
Dave Eadsforth