Helicopter collective

So I just bought myself a pilots collective from a Lynx!! So a couple of questions for all you builders.

What would you recommend - Leo Bodnar interface for the axis and switches? (I have zero programming skills by the way) - should I go down the pot or hall sensor route for pitch and throttle?

I've read that some use a mini moto steering damper to stop the collective dropping,how about a car handbrake? (There is a button called Col Rel (collective release?) -could that be a useful for such a thing?

Cheers guys

So I just bought myself a pilots collective from a Lynx!! So a couple of questions for all you builders.

What would you recommend - Leo Bodnar interface for the axis and switches? (I have zero programming skills by the way) - should I go down the pot or hall sensor route for pitch and throttle?

I've read that some use a mini moto steering damper to stop the collective dropping,how about a car handbrake? (There is a button called Col Rel (collective release?) -could that be a useful for such a thing?

Cheers guys

The car handbrake not for me no way. :(

I'm doing a proof of concept with this currently but it's working so well I've only managed to change out the gymbal and pots because the roll pot got noisy. here elsewhere in the forum, there are others

Some sort of damper or friction clutch would do nicely.

I haven't bothered with the throttle, apart from starting when I have to I wouldn't use it normally.

I have only gone with potentiometers because I'm using the electronics interface from the joystick, currently working on the pedals.

With other interfaces you also get to have better resolution and choice of opto encoders or DMME etc. however some programming may be required.:thumbup:

Great project, i'd use bearings for the rotational axis of the collective.

You'll find flying will be even better with "real" control surfaces, Rift even better. :thumbup:

Yeah, the rift is absolutely amazing, could never go back to flying on a tv. Only wish I could get my fps up to a decent mark!!

So I just bought myself a pilots collective from a Lynx!! So a couple of questions for all you builders.

What would you recommend - Leo Bodnar interface for the axis and switches? (I have zero programming skills by the way) - should I go down the pot or hall sensor route for pitch and throttle?

I've read that some use a mini moto steering damper to stop the collective dropping,how about a car handbrake? (There is a button called Col Rel (collective release?) -could that be a useful for such a thing?

Cheers guys

Hey Mr Mojo!

Glad to see another chopper pilot taking up the DIY route. Check my thread Mag Brake Build about Magnetic Brake and Cyclic. I am restoring a Mi-24/Mi-8 cyclic and collective. I am using a mag brake for the collective too now, with a steering damper for feel. Just working on the last details for my collective and then will post updates.

Leo Bodnar boards are great. Windows reads them as a controller, easy to program in DCS. Get a breakout board too, you get a ton of easy buttons that way. You can build a button box to go into it too, not just for your collective/cyclic. Otherwise you are wiring a very complex matrix (Did that once, AGGHHHH!) The Col Rel button can manage your Collective Brake, so long as you have something electronic to release, (like an electro-magnet).

I would suggest Hall sensors over pots. No alignment issues, less mechanicals to get right, and Bodnar reads them .

Which pilot's collective did you get, Pilot or Co-pilot? And what did you pay for it? I have been watching these for a while and there is a huge variance in pricing. And if you want the Lynx cyclic to match, I am selling one for less than all the other cyclics on eBay....

Feel free to ask for advice and ideas.

Mole

Lynx pilots collective

Hey Molevitch,

It's the pilots collective I got for £160 and looks in half decent condition - I did see one sold for about £95 a couple of months and in very good nick as well. (This pic I robbed from t'internet) mine arrives tomorrow.

Actually I just started getting back into helos recently when I uploaded upuauts Bell 47. Even though I've had the Huey since day one (which is my go to module - when not flying my trusty M2K!).

Also I had a cool A-10C pit build a while ago which had pretty much every switch I needed bar the gauges that ran off 4 bodnar boards (hence my looking at these again). Gets addictive, eh? Took to bits and sold most of it though to help pay for the Rift. Still got some bits and bobs left - switches, buttons, encoders etc. So the Col Rel is as I thought then, looks like it probably uses a solenoid switch or something (like the SAS switches in the hog)

Ok, so that's good Bodnar runs hall sensors, never used them before so may give them a try.

Think I'll leave the cyclic though, cheers - my Warthog grip is great for every airframe! Might even get a Virpil base when they're sorted as their gimbal looks amazing. I'll read over your thread later, I'm sure I'll have questions!!

This ain't gonna be a full on pro job by the way, lol. I hardly get the time to fly in DCS let alone tinkering with stuff anymore with kids hanging around asking questions etc lol

Leo Bodnar boards are great. Windows reads them as a controller, easy to program in DCS. Get a breakout board too, you get a ton of easy buttons that way. You can build a button box to go into it too, not just for your collective/cyclic. Otherwise you are wiring a very complex matrix (Did that once, AGGHHHH!) The Col Rel button can manage your Collective Brake, so long as you have something electronic to release, (like an electro-magnet).

 

I would suggest Hall sensors over pots. No alignment issues, less mechanicals to get right, and Bodnar reads them .

This.... I have had that Leo Bodnar boards site bookmarked for years but never been ready to pull the trigger for couple of them. I know they are super easy to use to make a own button/switch layout etc. But then how to really do the axis for some others?

Pots has had bad fame for no reason other than many using a cheap terrible pots. A good quality 255 level pot will work totally perfectly and is more than enough for most situations, and actually can be slightly better in many cases. But.... Attaching them with custom work can be there to damage them more.

I have planned to do a own collective for a few years as I have been flying KA-50 but just never got to do it.

So is there more information and experiences/tutorials with videos/photos how to actually calibrate those hall sensors? Where to get a good ones etc?

The Bodnar Bu0836X board supports 3 or 4 axis as well! It's a great bit of kit for £50. Not sure about your other questions yet, but I'm sure I'll be trying a few types until I get it right. Also there are plenty of people have good advice on here to learn from

Work in progress

So I went for the BU0836A board this time as it's smaller. Bad idea. My soldering ain't the best - should have done the X board again. Anyways I've made the mount and started wiring some of the switches but come into a problem. The 3 way switches were ok but the two way momentary switch has 8 wires out the back and I can't figure it out. Any ideas?

Also the 4 way hat switch has 16 wires out the back! Is there an easy way to find out what's what?

The Col Rel button is reversed - so you press it to switch off. I guess there is no way around that either.

.

Next will be the hall sensors. One for the pitch and one for the throttle. Hope I've bought the analogue and not the digital ones!!!

So I went for the BU0836A board this time as it's smaller. Bad idea. My soldering ain't the best - should have done the X board again. Anyways I've made the mount and started wiring some of the switches but come into a problem. The 3 way switches were ok but the two way momentary switch has 8 wires out the back and I can't figure it out. Any ideas?

 

Also the 4 way hat switch has 16 wires out the back! Is there an easy way to find out what's what?

 

The Col Rel button is reversed - so you press it to switch off. I guess there is no way around that either.

.

Next will be the hall sensors. One for the pitch and one for the throttle. Hope I've bought the analogue and not the digital ones!!!

Hi Mr_Mojo,

Make yourself a simple test rig with a aa battery and a torch bulb. And some sticky labels for each wire.

My guess is that there is redundancy wiring, to allow for failures and even battle damage. It is after all a military vehicle. So the 4-way hat switch is actually four switches, each with 2 common and 2 live. Is the 2-way momentary switch marked as anything? Is it Radio?

M

You can reverse the collective brake button with a relay switch.

The Bodnar Bu0836X board supports 3 or 4 axis as well!

As curiosity: BU0836 code came from:

B = Bodnar

U = USB

8 = 8 axis

36 = 36 buttons (4 reserved for POV HAT). ;)

This support for 8 axis is in analog mode, can be plugged in the inputs though 3 wires potentiometer or contactless sensors (HALL, magneto resistance)... that work in analog mode.

Congratulations on you purchase mr_mojo97. You will have a lot of fun building that. At least I know I had when I recently assisted a good friend of mine with his collective; https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=185224

Yes we went for the BU0836X for ease.

With regard to figuring our the wires I suggest you take a multimeter that has continuety check with sound. It's an easy way of setting checking which wires goes where. Just attached one lead to the common, and the other lead to another wire and start flipping the switches until you get a tone.

As molevitch says 16 wires are probabbly redundant, or it's because it is used for different systems in the aircraft.

Looking forward to seeing more pictures of your build.

Cheers

Hans

Cheers Hansolo, that was an awesome project you just did. Got my new X board coming tomorrow. What kind of damper are you using there? I have a push to OFF button for the collective release and was hoping to use that with a solenoid switch - we'll see how that pans out!!

It looks like the up and down switches of the 4 way hatswitch don't work and the two momentary switches don't seem to work (at least with my rudimentary bulb test circuit I made!) - I'll try again when the multimeter arrives

We used this one for dampening; http://www.ebay.com/itm/CNC-Steering-Damper-Motorcycle-Stabilizer-Linear-Reversed-Safety-Control-Black-/111520624771?epid=580061572&hash=item19f725b083:g:-dgAAOSw2XFUawQW&vxp=mtr

With regards to the hat switch we noticed that when measuring on the end of the wires that one of the directions didn't work unless a toggle switch was in a particular position. It appeared that there was an electrical interlock in the real helicopter but since we wanted the most out of the collective with just rewired so all inputs were available.

If you run into any trouble with the mapping of the switches post some pictures and you should be able to get some assistance fast :-)

Cheers

Hans

Just a quick update.

Managed to get all the wires sorted out using a multi-meter (took a couple of hours mind you - while having a few beers and watching Guy Martins Spitfire programme).

Anyways, I'm going with the basic build of the century here. I've built a new stand for it and added the hall sensors close to the pivot point. They seem to be working quite well, it's still in the testing stage so will need some permanent solution but it seems at this point I will stay with hall sensors rather than pots.

Now, a small issue arose when I found out that the Westland Lynx uses a FADEC system (Full Authority Digital Engine Control) - no manual control of throttle at all. So I can't find out what the round, nothcy turny thing is below the collective head. It clearly has a linkage system, so presumably moving the collective up and down makes this thing auto throttle(?). So I'm not sure what to do with this - at the moment I've bound the throttle to the 3 way (on-off-on) thumb switch which actually works really well - although I'll probably change this to the 2 thumb operated momentary switches adjacent the 3 way.

Still to come is the dampening system and the mag brake. I've ordered a 12v 50N (equivalent to holding around 5kg) electro magnet and a 12v 1A dc charger. If it works I might also try a 5v version to cut out the charger cable and plug it straight into the Bodnar board.

The damping I'll probably go with the same system as Mole here- seems straight forward enough.

Sorry for the crap iPad photos.

This is pure speculation but the "nothcy turny thing" looks very much like a friction collar, I'd imagine the fastening point would be attached to an arm of some sort which would force it down the collective shaft as you pull the grip up.

The knurled unit is simply a collar system that slides along the collectives shaft and physically sets a limit between max collective and minimum collective.

It is attached to an A frame via an articulated armature that forces the knurled unit to slide up and down the collective shaft as the pilot lowers or increases collective.

This is a Westland collective, only hydraulic resistance and breaking here, non of this riff raff friction malarkey!

Hi Mr_Mojo97,

Looking very good already.

Don't under-do the magnet. When activated you will get quite a powerful snatch effect, and a loud clunk as it grips. I went for these, which are more than adequate, but as I am using slide friction of the magnet, rather than trying to pull them apart, it is still just possible to move the sticks under duress. They have a 60kg pull!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B018VBIJO8/ref=pe_1909131_77697001_tnp_email_TE_AMZLdp_2

You know Bodnar do 2 pin and 3 pin connectors, ready wired? Easy to use and no fiddly soldering near the board. But I know what you mean, I have got much better at soldering!

Relisted my Lynx Cyclic on eBay starting bid £60.00....

Update 2.

Finally got the time to do some more.

So I've gone through a couple of different dampers, a gas strut and a universal steering damper. Neither I'm afraid were to my liking. I ended up using basic neodymium magnets (robbed from my IKEA knife rack!) attached to a bracket - the linkage on the collective has an attached length of metal taken from a carpenters bevel gauge and this glides past the bracket (as in the pic). There is very little friction and one magnet holds the collective nicely.

I tried the relay with the PTB buttons without luck yet (although I've only tried it with 5v from the Leo Bodnar board rather than 12v power supply - I was hoping to avoid another cable).

Still not decided what to do with the collar system either.

Still haven't sorted my axis yet either. The hall sensor is between 2 magnets and slows down quite a bit between them at the centre - maybe more testing in axis tune is in order.

I've also added some extra encoders, two way and three way switches and a couple of buttons - still got an extra 6 inputs for the board too!

Update 2.

Finally got the time to do some more.

 

So I've gone through a couple of different dampers, a gas strut and a universal steering damper. Neither I'm afraid were to my liking. I ended up using basic neodymium magnets (robbed from my IKEA knife rack!) attached to a bracket - the linkage on the collective has an attached length of metal taken from a carpenters bevel gauge and this glides past the bracket (as in the pic). There is very little friction and one magnet holds the collective nicely.

 

I tried the relay with the PTB buttons without luck yet (although I've only tried it with 5v from the Leo Bodnar board rather than 12v power supply - I was hoping to avoid another cable).

 

Still not decided what to do with the collar system either.

 

Still haven't sorted my axis yet either. The hall sensor is between 2 magnets and slows down quite a bit between them at the centre - maybe more testing in axis tune is in order.

 

I've also added some extra encoders, two way and three way switches and a couple of buttons - still got an extra 6 inputs for the board too!

Looking very good! I like your switchboard in the background.

I suggest it will be best to put the PTB brake release on a separate circuit with the 12v supply. It does not need to communicate with DCS, there is no real collective brake button in DCS that is worth worrying about. You just need it to work mechanically. No need to go through the bodnar board in my opinion. Works like that for me.

While I put my collective lever read on to a couple of pots, I have just put my cyclic on to Halls. I have one magnet that rotates towards the face of the Halls. I get a good read that way. I may put my collective to Halls eventuyally, but for now, I just want to fly!

The switch panel if you look closely is my old A-10C radio panel - just some plexiglass with a laminated photo of the real thing glued to it. The mega cheap option. Lol.

I might just leave the relay for now, beacause I swap around with the Warthog throttle quite a bit, having an extra cable to unplug would be a pain in the arse.

You've given my an idea about the hall sensors - for some reason I thought it would be better using two magnets - maybe just one going towards a steel bracket would be better.

I got to where I need to be to be able to fly, the touch ups and fine tuning will come later. Now, time to fly the Huey.

@cheers Bignewy - in fact it was your build that made me think about doing one ages ago!

Indeed looking good mr_mojo97. :thumbup:

I have managed to put a home brew switch panel in my collective, yet to actually wire it up. Not no from VR flying this time but from being on holiday although today I will be flying stick time and all in a Robinson R44, 2 hours booked .:D:D:D:D

Progress so far

I have a motorcycle steering damper ready to go in when I get back but it's looking like I need to goto prototype Mk II. ;)

20/20 hindsight is a great research tool. :music_whistling: