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I got tired of not building anything so I went ahead and built a helicopter collective. I'm hoping to eventually build a helicopter seat (cyclic and pedals) that I can wheel up to the computer when I want to fly. It's just a generic rendition of a collective but it does the job.
http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/2981/img1447a.jpg
http://img580.imageshack.us/img580/4341/img1449i.jpg
What a novel idea. Nice one.
Keep us posted on this one and how it is all put together.
Have you incorporated a twist grip for the throttle - hehe.
Gary
Great build!
Nice work Shawn.
Looks like a very well designed unit. Looking forward to seeing the cyclic and pedals. Great to see something different.
Cheers
Rhydian
Thanks for the nice comments guys, it was good fun getting back out in the shop doing something i wanted to do ie, not something on the honey do list. :) I didn't incorporate a twist grip throttle but that is in the works for the second generation collective. I learned enough from this build to make me want to start over again and improve on the design. The one interesting thing that I did find and that might prove useful to other builders was a cheap "flap/lid stay" that I used to provide resistance to the collective lever. I needed something that would keep the collective in place and looked high and low for a dual action damper but couldn't find one. I settled on this $5.00 lid stay and it works great.It wouldn't be strong enough for something like a yoke but to add some resistance to throttle levers, etc it might prove useful. Here's a link to the part I bought at home depot. http://www.homedepot.ca/webapp/wcs/s...k=P_PartNumber
A simple cheap solution to a problem that probably caused a lot of head scatching. How ingenious.
Great tip and one that could have many uses for other builders, I'm sure.
Gary
Wow Shaun, that is very impressive. You know, I would really like to see that, along with a cyclic and anti-torque pedals. I bet that would be something! I am looking for flight controls, such as that, for my flight sim. Unfortunately, I cannot find any.
The cyclic and pedals are now in the works, I built a test version of the cyclic gimbal that works but weighs a ton! @ student-pilot, the collective was actually pretty simple, read through the forums, buy a bodnar board and have a go at building one. If you have any questions feel free to PM me or post in the forums. You'll be surprised at how easy most of this stuff is.
I had seen a pic of an office chair that had been outfitted with helicopter controls, collective and cyclic anyway. It was over at the Hovercontrol website. He had used handrail tubing and had u-bolted it together and to the chair. Made it look like the chair was built to fly helicopters with. I went back there to find the chair but no dice. I'm thinking though if you had mind too you could do the same thing using car exhaust tubing and u-bolts found at any auto parts store. Painted white or black could look pretty spiffy.
Just a thought.
Ron.
I used 1" electrical conduit for both the collective arm and my cyclic shaft. It's easy to bend with an electrical conduit bender, drills easily and looks fine once it's sanded/painted, plus it's cheap and readily available. I wore a mask and sanded the conduit outside because I think the coating on the conduit isn't that good for you?
There are a number of people who have simply extended the shaft on a joystick to create a cyclic. One of the problems with extending a joystick shaft is that the further you extend the shaft the greater the deflection of the controls is required. You can get around this somewhat by re-calibrating your controls to recognize a shorter throw distance but then your not taking full advantage of your potentiometers and will lose some precision. I found this tutorial at flightsim.com that addresses this issue in a rather simple way.
http://www.flightsim.com/main/howto/joystick.htm