Control Yoke Potentiometers

Hi

At the moment, I use a home made gearboxes to increase the rotation of potentiometers for the throttle levers, prop and mixture. Without full rotation of the pot spindle, activation is insufficient.
I am thinking of building a yoke system, but notice that builders interface directly with the (usually) slide potentiometer without any gearing? The aileron axis pot (might) travel the full distance, but the elevator pot will only travel part way (unless the yoke is pushed through the instrument panel as well as being pulled back to floor level to fully activate the pot!!).

Is there a special value of pot that will do the job (I have been trying 100k).
Is it possible to use only part of the full sweep, and configure in FSUIPC?
Can anyone let me into the secret?

Thanks.


TONY.

Folks here use both sliders and pots with gears for this. It depends on your designe. I you calabrate it in windows you should get the full motion, thats why you calabrate. 100k should be about right but it depends on your interface.

Hi

I find 100K pots work the best. When you hook up your linkages, attempt to get 3/4 of the pot slide or rotation. I recommend a slide pot for the Elevator axis, and Rotary pot for the Ailerons.

Good luck.

Trev

A rotary can also be used with a simple lever attached to the shaft and either a swivel ball rod end or just a stiff piece of wire.
:D

Beta Innovations sells a small amplifier that is wired to a pot.
it adds more sensitivity to pots that don't turn their full distance.

If you have trouble calibrating the elevator,, this might help.

Without getting to involved joystick input works like this.

A potentiometer is a variable resister!
The potentiometer is used to increase or decrease voltage applied to a capacitor in the sound card of the computer. A timing circuit!

The more voltage you apply to the capacitor the faster it charges
and discharges. The computer then counts the charge/discharge rate of the
capacitor and calculates the position of the joystick.

Say your joystick has a 100K pot and your throttle handle only turns the pot 1/4 turn you may find it's just not quite enough.

100K should be ample to do about any input job for you.

But if you need try anything up to a 500K after that things
over react to even the smallest input.

There is no difference between a rotary trim pot and a sliding pot
other than how you drive it in the yoke.
Use liner taper trim pots!

****Take care that you go into FS/Options/Controls and slide the sensitivity up full and see if it helps!

Ron

[QUOTE=Ron;47370]Without getting to involved joystick input works like this.

A potentiometer is a variable resister!
The potentiometer is used to increase or decrease voltage applied to a capacitor in the sound card of the computer. A timing circuit!

The more voltage you apply to the capacitor the faster it charges
and discharges. The computer then counts the charge/discharge rate of the
capacitor and calculates the position of the joystick.

Say your joystick has a 100K pot and your throttle handle only turns the pot 1/4 turn you may find it's just not quite enough.

100K should be ample to do about any input job for you.

But if you need try anything up to a 500K after that things


My main interest is knowing how, or if sim builders connect directly to a pot, or through a gearbox? I have seen photo's of set-ups where a pot is directly actuated (no gearbox). If this is the case, the physical movement of say an aileron wire operated by the movement of a yolk, will be insufficient to fully operate the pot?

TONY.

Just pay attention if you use potentiometers with a higher K value, they tend to cause more jitter then the lower ones. I allways used 100K so far but I will try the 10K this time.

All of mine are 10K. Never had any jitter trouble with them.

Hi again Tony

What it all boils down to Tony is you can direct drive a potentiometer
with a yoke or throttle handle or you can gear drive them.

Ether way they will work just fine. It’s all up to you!

This is good advice from Marnix
Pay attention if you use potentiometers with a higher K value, they tend to cause more jitter then the lower ones. I always used 100K.

I take it you have already been experimenting?

Go back and redo your experiments.

Make sure your inputs are wired correctly! 100K pots
If your pot only turns a small amount set it at the high
end of its rotation.

Go into Windows /desktop/joystick and make a custom joystick.
for example 3 axes 2 button joystick and install it.

You will have to install all 3 potentiometers or the computer won't
see the joystick.

Install momentary switches so you can configure the joystick.

Check to make sure windows is seeing the joystick!

If windows is showing the joystick installed and working.

Start flight simulator and calibrate the joystick.

Check and make sure that the sensitivity of your axis is turned up!!!!!
Flight simulator has a bad habit of starting you off with your sensitivities turned way down or off. Best of luck.

You do not need to use FSUIPC

Hope this helps
Ron