Beaker's center-stick project!

[Beaker]

All of the welding is done, finally. Ended up breaking off one of the sensor arms in the process, exactly like I had worried about. So, gonna have to reattach it before I can finish this up.

The suspense is killing me!

The motion with the new spring arrangement is fantastic... twice the tension even with just four springs, and it centers up quickly. It may be enough just as is, without adding the 4 additional diagonal springs!

The range of motion is roughly 6" in the X axis, 3" forward in the Y axis, and 5" aft in the Y axis... all very close to a real F/A-18 stick.

All together, it weighs over 20 pounds! Awesome!


For now, at least, it looks super-ghetto, but it's functional! The stick/shaft are not in place in this pic.

[Beaker]

Incredible. Perfectly smooth mechanics and roughly 15 pounds of tension aft in the current configuration.

I literally attached the Hall sensors, plugged everything together and the USB to the computer, and it worked like magic. It may not have the sensor precision of a commercial stick due to the small range of motion used by the Hall sensors, but it's precise enough to hold minute G values, and centers up to within 1% of axis center every time.

The mechanics are where it shines, which I find to be far more important than the sensors. The backside of a loop is just glass. It may take some getting used to the constant forward pull I currently have set, but I can already feel the positive effects during a Blue Angel demo. (At least, during the Delta sequence... I have the most trouble doing aileron rolls without unloading all of the tension as a natural reaction! )


Absolutely couldn't be more pleased. I was blown away by the result, especially without tweaking. Ask Blaze, I probably sounded like a total head case when he helped me test it for the first time!

[Lawndart]

Nice work Beaker!

Btw, I like your stopwatch! It's a solo thing...

[Beaker]

Oh yeah! Gotta be able to reach up there and press a real button.

[Teej]

Ever make any further changes?

I decided I wanted a center stick too, and not having a pit / seat that I could easily mount the Warthog base to, I went with the extension kit that 'Metalnwood' is selling...this also let me twist the stick to a more natural grip angle without changing the scale/zoom stuff in TARGET.

There's roughly 6" from center in every direction now and due to the weight of the grip, centering tension is almost nonexistant. (Seriously...without the heavy grip at the top, the spring still feels like it has a lot of force. Put the grip on and it's like a limp noodle.) I didn't think I was going to like the reduced force and was figuring I was going to have to cobble something together to get some tension back on it. After the first couple of flights, however...I like it just fine the way it is.

[Beaker]

Hey Teej. I found that the arm of the extended stick had a much greater effect than I had originally guesstimated... that's why my stick's base ended up so different than I had originally planned. (Although in retrospect, I probably could have found higher gauge springs and might have gotten close, but initial searching didn't turn up much.)

Only changes I've made have been to cut the excess bolt length in the stick grip, add more springs (eleven 20-lb-ers total,) and make a fairly quick exterior for it, involves some black pique fabric... better than nothing. In the end, all I'm looking for is performance, and it does admirably. Absolutely excellent in formation. In the future, I'd like to look into hydraulic dampening for the tension, though, because pure spring tension has that tendency to oscillate a little too much. (And unfortunately, there's no way to just "tighten up" a u-joint and use friction.) I have some ideas for how to implement that idea, but money and time will mean that won't happen for a while.

Either way, this thing is a real beast. Probably one of the most satisfying projects I've ever done.