WORK IN PROGRESS (adding material into this post and the next couple of replies to get the formatting set) This topic exists because of a late night ebay browsing. While I had previously looked into modifying joysticks and throttles, I'd never gone too deeply into it. After recently acquiring a thrustmaster warthog setup that was damaged, I decided that I needed to address a collective for flying helicopters again. Several years ago I had started running a second T.16000M as a collective in Arma but the difficulties in trying to keep the two sticks in the correct order of collective and cyclic was annoying. Later I went to a sideways mounted CH pro throttle but found that the just greater than 1.5in long travel made fine tuning of collective positions difficult. There are several different options out there for hacking and building joysticks, using the guts from one more modern joystick in the shell of a classic, using a commercial off the shelf controller board to wire into a joystick, or by using an opensource joystick code with a small controller board. To look at what joysticks might be worth using for their controller board take a look at the joystick resolution post. You aren't going to want to use a Logitech Wingman Force as a donor for anything other than the force feed back controller since it takes a single 8bit resolution and then shares it between the X and Y axis. For commercially available options: Leo Bodnar has been the go to for a long time with their BU0836 series of USB interface boards. With the ability to have 8 analog inputs with 12-bit, 4096 points of resolution along with 32 buttons and an 8 way hat it basically maxes out what windows will accept for a joystick input. The X version is about as simple as you can get for plug and play with no real soldering required to the board and no need for complicated programming. Desktop Aviator produces a number boards for button interfaces and joystick controllers. A number of these are intended for switch panels in sim pits but can be used in joystick applications. R&R Electronics produce the Epic series of cards for sim pit builders and are distributed within the US by FlightLink (themselves the manufacture of a number of higher end sim pit controls and panels) GroovyGameGear has a GP-Wiz40 MAX interface board which offers the ability to use quite a few switches but limited to rotary style joysticks. DIY/Opensource Controllers MJOY-16 This bridges between commercial and diy, it is no longer supported that I can tell, the designer's website that marketed it is no longer around. Some information about it is here at Simprojects.nl. Roland van Roy who has the Simprojects.nl site has some really nice diy projects including developing his own 6dof motion simulator platform and force feedback systems. MMJoy/MMJoy2 Sokol1 has quite the thread on SimHQ This is firmly in the DIY side of things, you have to flash the programming to the controller and make your own wiring and breakout boards for it. Still not too terribly difficult. Using the Arduino PRO Micro or $5 Chinese clone or Teensy 2.0 boards the firmware allows for a quite easy diy system.
Enter ebay... It started with finding the collective listed on ebay as an 80's era Huey Cobra, after it arrived I did some digging on the part numbers and was scratching my head on why there was a Hughes number on it and why it didn't match a single Bell helicopter. Turns out its from an AH-64A Apache helicopter, not quite the Huey family grip I was looking for to use in DCS, but not too shabby either. Now that I have an awesome collective I really wanted a cyclic to go with it. About this time I was hunting around ebay to see what else was out there when I came across the Cyclic grip from an AH-6 Littlebird which just happens to be the same grip used by the AH-64A Apache. Sadly this one was cracked and broken but all the buttons were there and JB weld will solve quite a few problems. While it would be nice to have the more modern AH-64D/E grips that are shared with the latest AH/MH-6 models, I'm not feeling like paying $1500-$2000 for each grip. Not to mention the feel of these blows every computer joystick out of the water save the Thrustmaster Warthog. Speaking of the Warthog, in hunting for a replacement switch for the collective I came across something else that I decided I had to try. Enter the One Throttle To Rule Them All!! While the Warthog is closer to a real aircraft's controls than anything else I've run into, when you happen to locate a supply of actual A-10A throttles... Well you can either say the thrustmaster is good enough, or dive off the deep end of building controllers. Sadly my source is out of pristine examples, the last few they have left all have issues. Mine is missing the speed brake switch, which is special to the A-10, and the rear illuminated face plate is cracked preventing the back lighting from working correctly. I'm working with them to try and get the switch, or to swap out throttles for one with different issues but all the switches.
You seem crazy for trying to do this but i'm starting one of my bucket list items this summer which is building a Kentucky/Pennsylvania long rifle. Which is about as nuts because traditional rifle building is about 50 jobs all into one. the thrustmaster looks like a toy next the real one. The real one looks more industrial/robust. which they need to be because peoples lives depend on it.
Yeah, try explaining to the next of kin that their loved one died because his flight stick fell apart. That'll go over well.
interesting you mention this... In searching for the Hughes part numbers I came across a technical report where a forensic metallurgy team examined and tested the sticks and grips from an AH-64 crash where the pilot's stick had failed and the copilot's stick showed indications that it might have issues as well. In the end the failed stick was ruled to have not been the cause of the crash but that it failed during the crash. The were poor welds detected where the grip attached to the stick when they examined the gunner's stick and then subsequently examined others from inventory. It ended causing the way the sticks were built to be changed to prevent it from possibly causing an accident. While tragic in the first crash, it ended up showing an unrelated failure point that was placing the rest of the fleet at risk. Now on to joysticks!!! After running some test variations of the setup I have the collective up and running. The prototyping breadboard with attached Teensy clone will still be moved and enclosed at the rear and the harness for the potentiometer will be changed to a dedicated one rather than the test one I had on hand. The potentiometer is sourced along with it's mount from an old gameport CH Products joystick. I highly recommend getting old gameport CH products joysticks to use for parts as they mount their potentiometers with a trim system. Once I mounted the linkage to obtain full range of the potentiometer wiper internally I could fine tune the position of the potentiometer to make sure I didn't miss any of the range. The gold damper, is an adjustable Chinese made motorcycle steering stabilizer. It allows for a sense of resistance when moving the collective, sadly I had to turn it all the way down to its lightest effect get the feel correct. This prevents making use of the collective friction lock as it would add too much resistance. I ended up running MMJoy2 on the board and after a bit of a learning curve I have it mostly working. There is some work still to be done with the switches, but computers like momentary switches for commands and not the style used on it so I'm working on understanding the advanced switch properties in MMJoy2 so that I can get the continuous switches to function properly. I still need to take molds from the hat switch on the A-10 throttle to make the proper caps to put on two of the switches on the collective but it is very nice to fly with, much better than trying to use the CH Pro Throttle turned sideways. While it cost more than I had intended to spend setting out and has taken longer than intended, I've learned quite a bit in the process and am glad that I decided to give it a try. Overall my expenditure was about $175, the collective was ~$90 shipped to me, the damper was $30, the breadboard $5, Teensy clone $4, CH Joystick $14, the hardware took up most of the rest along with the electrical connectors. Thankfully the wood was all scrap that I had laying around, and I should make some money back selling off the sealed connectors that the wires were attached to. The big cost was getting the tools for the electrical wiring, I didn't have a decent soldering iron here or the crimper for the connectors so I had to buy those on top of the cost but they will be used on other projects and not just count against this one.
