P-51 Hotas Anyone?

This looks awesome! Get the stick ready by 03/2015 and I'll not use any other module in DCS:1944 than the Pony :)

At this point if I were you, all production and progress would stop and all I would do is play the P-51 on DCS. I hope your will to continue is strong lol, it looks amazing! :thumbup:

Really nice :thumbup:

Fantastic! Great to see some more progress :)

Looking good there!!

That's definitely impressive, though the size of it and clear craftsmanship leads me to imagine that it'll be far outside my price range.

You should consider selling this throttle disassembled. This will save you time and the 'consumer' a few bucks. Maybe even omit the nuts and bolts since a wide variety of those are available in any DIY store. But a good assembly manual should be included.

But definitely a very good quality of craftsmanship. It looks awesome!

Looking good. What are you doing sensor wise? It looked like it was jumping around but I'm sure your not finished yet.

This looks awesome! Get the stick ready by 03/2015 and I'll not use any other module in DCS:1944 than the Pony :)

I wish I could. Going with FFB, I'm guessing it will be close to this time next year before I have a decent stick to accompany it. Unless the throttle is a total flop...then I'll have lots of time to focus on the stick!

At this point if I were you, all production and progress would stop and all I would do is play the P-51 on DCS. I hope your will to continue is strong lol, it looks amazing! :thumbup:

To be totally honest, I only have a couple hours (maybe) on DCS P-51. As soon as I started playing with my bargain basement joystick, I wondered if the tech drawings were available for the P-51 somewhere....and here we are. Don't worry, I need to stay on track so I can get better than a 10 year old computer to play it on (which is what I'm left with right now)!

That's definitely impressive, though the size of it and clear craftsmanship leads me to imagine that it'll be far outside my price range.

I'm hoping not, but I really haven't sat down and figured out the pricing yet. I know of another company making uncertified replica quadrants which sell for $1875 US....and that is without adding sensors/USB to it. I would actually consider that a fair price after seeing how much work is involved...if I had to pay someone's wages or machine time to make the parts I'd probably be close to that price as well. I'm hoping I come in with a number that is about 1/5 of that...I'll have a better idea shortly.

You should consider selling this throttle disassembled. This will save you time and the 'consumer' a few bucks. Maybe even omit the nuts and bolts since a wide variety of those are available in any DIY store. But a good assembly manual should be included.

 

But definitely a very good quality of craftsmanship. It looks awesome!

I thought about that...and may offer that as one of the lower model kickstarter rewards when it is launch time. It is somewhat tricky to assemble though...and I would like to know that it is 100% working when it leaves.

Looking good. What are you doing sensor wise? It looked like it was jumping around but I'm sure your not finished yet.

It has hall effect sensors for all axes and also for the mixture lever (even though mixture lever is simulated as 3 buttons). It is jumping around quite a bit in the video, but don't worry it's not cheap pots causing it. It's a combination of noise on the breadboard, not enough caps to smooth things out and some of my debugging code causing jitter. This will be sorted out...I have confirmed it isn't from the sensors themselves and it didn't exist before I started doing some math on the A to D conversion.

I know a few people were wondering what a desk mount would look like. The very simple hardwood mount in the pic works quite well, though it isn't very pretty. A cleaned up version similar to this is what I'm leaning towards. Instructions on how to make your own are an option too...this is a single piece of 1/2"T x 2" wide hardwood and a few bits of standard hardware. If those interested in a throttle had the tools and the willingness to make their own mount it would probably save a bundle on shipping...did I mention that shipping from Canada to anywhere is ridiculously expensive?!

Looking very good.

I am more than willing to deal with making a wood mount since I will need to do some customizations to mount, what ever is shipped, to make it fit my desk in any case. So I vote for "instructions on how to make your own are an option...". Lower shipping cost is a win in my book.

Looks like you are getting close although there is still some detail work to do before you can start an actual production run. Keep at it that light you see is not a train coming the other direction.

This has generated some buzz over on the FlightGear forum although I am not sure how many FG P-51D pilots there will pony up for this. As soon as I get my hands on one I will create a FlightGear configuration file for it and check it in to the FlightGear code repository. So FlightGear should be one of the first flight sims, if not the first, with official support for this.

Hal

Absolutely amazing! Keep up the good work!! :thumbup:

Looking very good.

 

I am more than willing to deal with making a wood mount since I will need to do some customizations to mount, what ever is shipped, to make it fit my desk in any case. So I vote for "instructions on how to make your own are an option...". Lower shipping cost is a win in my book.

 

Looks like you are getting close although there is still some detail work to do before you can start an actual production run. Keep at it that light you see is not a train coming the other direction.

 

This has generated some buzz over on the FlightGear forum although I am not sure how many FG P-51D pilots there will pony up for this. As soon as I get my hands on one I will create a FlightGear configuration file for it and check it in to the FlightGear code repository. So FlightGear should be one of the first flight sims, if not the first, with official support for this.

 

Hal

Happy to hear that it will be configured for Flightgear...that's great news! Honestly I'm not that familiar with that sim, how is the mixture lever simulated in it? In DCS, I couldn't find any way to assign an axis to it, so the way the mixture lever is currently programmed is to act as button presses depending on the range it is in. Seems to work pretty good, but I may also need to setup an actual axis configuration if that is how FG and other sims simulate it.

There are still some loose ends to tidy up, but I'm getting to the point where the Kickstarter project is almost ready to launch. I'm planning on keeping the initial production batch separate of the Kickstarter project... which will be to build the units for those who have already spoken for them on this forum. Those units will be produced no matter what the result of the Kickstarter campaign is and at a significantly lower price than what they will be offered for afterwards. This is to keep in line with my original thinking of just charging enough to make a few units which will pay for some of the development. Believe it or not the development of this unit is in the thousands of dollars even without assigning any value to the labor I put into it. I'm putting together final pricing now...I'll be back soon with actual numbers and expected delivery info.

In other news, a slightly improved prototype (let's call it prototype version 1.1) is on its way to the Duxford Air Show as a first glimpse of the (semi-) finished hardware. Unfortunately due to an issue of overtravel with the gearing for the sensors, (and also from running out of time) this unit is just the hardware (no sensors/USB). The gearing issue is minor (just needs a pinon with a slightly higher tooth count) but I just couldn't get it implemented in time for the show as the sensors had only been temporarily attached for proving out the location/actuation.

VH-Rock and Pman of the Virtual Horsemen have graciously offered to bring it to Dux and let a few people get their hands on it. I know I'll get some feedback that will improve the final product. A big thank you to these guys for bringing it to the show!

In the pic you can see the unit that is on its way. Slight improvements to the friction knobs (including real solid rivets this time) and face plate. I'm not 100% happy with the engraving on these, but a spring loaded engraving tool will solve those problems shortly. Currently I have to dial these parts up to within .001" flatness on the mill before engraving....and even that doesn't guarantee a perfect end result. The mixture and pitch knobs have been increased in diameter so that they almost match the size of that specified on the drawings. They are within 5% of the stated size, so that's close enough for me (original is 1.125" diameter....these are 30mm).

Im out of work and cant do much right now, but around Christmas time, I may be

very interested in a stick first, and then the throttle. Photos look really great !!

cant we get some love for a Huey Stick and collective?

 

would be very usefull for Black Shark allso.

WORD we need a Huey rig :thumbup:

Well, I had a very exciting package arrive this morning - it's here! Massive thanks to Chris for a herculean effort to get something over to us for this weekend. I've just had the opportunity to unbox it and what an incredible piece of work this is! Truly fantastic, exceptional quality.

I'm sure the public will get a real kick from seeing it this weekend

Where do we buy this?

How do you mount it to your desk/chair?

Where do we buy this?

Not quite available yet...however I am pleased to announce that the Kickstarter campaign will begin on October 1st. I'm still working on some of the details and final pricing.

How do you mount it to your desk/chair?

If you look at the previous page, you can see a very simple hardwood mount designed to mount the quadrant to a desk. I am still looking into a more polished version of a mount, but I suspect that most people will end up building a simple mount of their own from the dimensions that I will supply for mounting. The mount you see in the previous page was put together for about $10...

Happy to hear that it will be configured for Flightgear...that's great news! Honestly I'm not that familiar with that sim, how is the mixture lever simulated in it? In DCS, I couldn't find any way to assign an axis to it, so the way the mixture lever is currently programmed is to act as button presses depending on the range it is in. Seems to work pretty good, but I may also need to setup an actual axis configuration if that is how FG and other sims simulate it.

Mixture in FG is currently an axis and the current P-51D is configured to use axis ranges to set the mixture to the three values (IE. idle cut off - <= 0.1, run >0.1 and <0.9 and emergency full rich - >= 0.9). But the joystick configuration in FG is very flexible up to the point of being able to bind joystick axis or buttons to arbitrarily complex scripts.

In addition I have complete control of the P-51D and since this throttle is P-51D specific I can setup the P-51D to do special things if needed to correctly support the throttle. For example I can setup the joystick configuration to set a custom FG property and then in the P-51D code I can look for this property and do things that are specific to this joystick if needed. In other words I can and will do whatever is needed to make the throttle work correctly (I am a software engineer by trade so even if I have to write some complex scripts I will get it done).

My preference would be to have the mixture be an axis if this is possible (would make things very simple to setup - IE. a 1 liner in the JS config file - no change to the current P-51D code) but if it needs to be 3 buttons I can live with that and it would end up being perhaps 8 to 10 lines in the config file for the throttle. So either way is basically trivial to do. I also suspect that most sims will expect an axis since that is the general case for a mixture control.

On a related note I will also likely have to make changes to how the throttle is handled for WEP settings. Currently the following JSBSim function maps the throttle setting to the desired manifold pressure:

      <scheduled_gain name="systems/engine/target-mp-inhg">
           <input>propulsion/engine/set-running</input>
           <table>
               <independentVar>/controls/engines/engine/throttle</independentVar>
               <tableData>
                     0.0    10.95
                     0.97   66.99
                     0.99   67.00
                     1.0    75.05
               </tableData>         
           </table>
       </scheduled_gain>

Since normal throttle levers do not have a WEP stop this is currently simulated by having what amounts to a dead spot between throttle values from 0.97 to 0.99 for the top of the non-WEP throttle range and then at a 100% throttle setting WEP kicks in.

As a side note this aircraft is a late war machine that is setup for 150 octane fuel to 8th air force specifications. British specs called for allowing up to 81 inches with this same fuel.

So depending on how the WEP stuff works on this throttle I will probably have to tweak this code.

Woow dude i'm really impress!

THAT is freaking Awesome !

I don't see this on kickstarter.

I don't see this on kickstarter.

Yeah, sorry I haven't really provided any updates in a while.

Due to some unforeseen changes in my professional life, I have suddenly taken on a new role with much added responsibilites. Due to the time commitments required, I have pushed back kickstarter release until at least the new year. The project is not dead, it is however delayed...

I will still be working in the background to try and finish the units that have been spoken for since the beginning of this project, however I can't give a firm timeline on completion date. Also, with the help of VH-Rock and Pman taking the prototype to Duxford, some knowledgeable individuals were able to take a look at it and recommend a few changes. I will be taking the time to research and hopefully implement these changes.

Any news?