Or in fact any altitude above FL180?
Yes, to get above summer icing, to get above winter TCU or to avoid summer TS by being visual on top, to get direct routings, to gain TAS, to enjoy stupid tailwinds when available
Whatever floats your boat. I sure as hell would not want to sit in such an airplane for more than an hour, actually it’s one of the reasons I don’t fly our DA40 (there are quite a few others).
One of the best things about stick controls is that you can rest your arm on your leg and your hand on the stick and you can sit there comfortably for hours.
I have tried all different variants of stick/yoke. Center stick is the best overall since you can change hands and it’s more precise than a yoke and faster. I think ergonomically, a right hand stick is optimal, then use the left hand for throttle and button pushing. The downside is it makes it very difficult to write notes if you are right handed 
A yoke only really works well if the aircraft is large and/or slow reacting and super stable.
I wonder how left handed Cirrus pilots cope.
The vast majority of my flying hours are in planes with left hand on stick between knees, and my relatively dexterous right hand for everything else, switches, knobs and touch screens. It works for me as nothing I’ve owned requires a gorilla on the controls and my left arm does the job well. As mentioned above its very natural on longer flights, you slide your hand down the stick until your arm rests on your leg, and just give it little pokes with your wrist to stay straight and level. Very nice.
The little C-152 I flew as a student wasn’t too bad with a yoke, and the metal wing C-170 was OK too but recently I’ve been flying some other bigger planes (C-180 etc) and in those types the fun of flying is gone for me with yoke control and truck-like control forces. More like arm wrestling the yoke with your elbow in the air than flying.
The Diamond DA-40 I’ve flown is like a sailplane, not exactly sporty due to long wingspan but not unpleasant to control. They do seem to yaw around a bit and require regular rudder input. The board like seats are completely awful, the worst I’ve felt in any plane, but that’s a different thing and one that you’d hope they’ve sorted that out on this one.
Silvaire wrote:
The little C-152 I flew as a student wasn’t too bad with a yoke, and the metal wing C-170 was OK too but recently I’ve been flying some other bigger planes (C-180 etc) and in those types the fun of flying is gone for me with yoke control and truck-like control forces
I used to fly arobatics in a C-152 Aerobat a long time ago Didn’t think much of it then, but compared with a stick it’s just too much “separation” of pitch and yaw movement. The Aerobat is very light on the controls compared with a C-172 for instance, it’s really nice to fly though, but would be even better with a stick
LeSving wrote:
I wonder how left handed Cirrus pilots cope.
I would have thought the Cirrus would be better for a left hander than a right hander, given the dominant hand would be on the stick.
172driver wrote:
It’s expensive, non-pressurized, doesn’t have a parachute, unmovable seats, only goes to 20k ft and you have to fly it with a center stick
And it’s ugly, too (and it looks like it has tank slit like forward visibility).
However, on the centre stick – I would prefer it like that. You could possibly improve the centre stick by doing it like it was done for Austers – the stick curves away below panel height (before joining the apparatus which joins the two sticks together, and connects to the control cables) so that it never gets in the way of your knees while getting in or out – but it still retains the qualities of having a centre stick, which as noted (and IMHO) a much more satisfactory way to control a plane. I’m not sure what being an IFR tourer has to do with it, given the lack of a need to have stuff stuck to the yoke on a newly built plane these days anyway.
I do like the top pivoted stick on many modern planes, like for example the TB-30.
