Thick8

Yes. The soldering process for the 8-pin mini din was a PITA. (I have several failure videos to prove it) I realized that someone with less than a mastery skill would not be able to do it. So I had to try a couple of different methods (and wait for parts) till I hit on one that anyone could do. I am average at soldering and I can solder up the whole connector in less than 10 minutes. I will have the last part of the base assembly video up tomorrow. I also felt that the hat switch needed to be simplified. I found the perfect replacement but had to do a slight redesign the Huey head in order to make the video with the new switch. It should be finished printing tomorrow and I will start the Huey head assembly video. Sorry it’s been slow going but I’ve been crazy busy at work these past few weeks. Nothing like working 8 hours a day in a 100f+ degree shop to suck the life out of a person. John

You are inadvertently double clicking your middle mouse button whilst scrolling the wheel. Scroll less enthusiastically or just double click the wheel to change focus back. Hope this helps. John

LOL! The funny part is that I’m a mechanic by trade and have 8 “manly” Snap-on hammers in my toolbox at work.

Sorry about the time between updates. It's been crazy busy at work and I've been pretty beat by the time I get home in the evening; so I haven't been spending as much time building the collectives. I have finished the first interchangeable head collective (There's a video of it on my phone that I'll upload) and am currently using it it. I didn't make a video of it's assembly but I've just finished the last part of the base assembly video on the one I printed last week. I will have to edit it and get it up on YouTube. I will start on the head assembly video tomorrow. That one will be for sale once it's finished next week some time. The next one should be done printing early next week. Not sure if I'm going to build it or sell it as a self build kit. Once the assembly videos are posted I hope to have some feedback on that decision. Thanks for you interest. John EDIT: I've posted the first 11 assembly videos on my YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCroXLHnirCH9a5ZsEa-LT2w/videos

I'm on my 3rd final cockpit. Just sayin'... :music_whistling:

I still think the OLED screens of the Odyssey+ are much better than the LED/LCD screens of the other offerings. I do love to fly at night though. Richer colors and deeper blacks with virtually no screen door effect at all. The adjustable IPD goes pretty wide too if you need that feature. And a 1080ti will hold a steady 45 FPS with lots of eye candy enabled. They can be had used for $250 which would give you an idea if VR is for you. If you don't like them you can get your money back out of them on eBay, John

Hiya Deadman, My searches yielded no fruit unfortunately. It looks like I will be drawing it from scratch. I don’t fly the KA-50 so when I had issues reinstalling it on my new machine a couple years back I just left it off. I will have to see if I can get that module working again. Thanks. John

I have, but the diameter of the body of all the ones I found was too great. If I could find one with a 16ish mm diameter I would swap it out. If you know of any let me know. John

his STL files before he left us. I'm hoping to find his KA-50 collective head files. Did he post them anywhere? Thanks. John

Thanks for the kind words everyone, I think the price is going to be $300ish for the Huey and more for the Kiowa because it's more collective. That's fully assembled. Kits will be significantly less because I won't have to do all that tedious soldering and such. I'm not sure about the KA-50 because I haven't even started on that one yet. @borisff OK you caught me, I'm a Jedi ;D @Mapi It sounded like a cool name. So the whole series will be Simple-Controls: Collective, Simple-Controls: Pedals, Simple-Controls: Cyclic, Simple-Controls: button box. Oh crap, I'm going to need another printer... I'll be back in a couple of days with the completed Huey collective and maybe a completed Kiowa head. Till then. John

I cheated and used mom-off-mom rotary switches instead of encoders. I just couldn't get the encoders to work right. With the dial switches you loose the tactile click but also the aggravation of missing the frequency you are trying to select. John

Do you have a key binding list available? Need to know if I should use ON-ON switches for the in game ON-OFF switches like the Huey. Thanks John

:megalol::megalol::megalol:

Hello All, In February I purchased a little 3D printer so I could build my own collective and a few other things I had in mind. The first collective I built was one that I found on Thingiverse. It has some inherent issues that I wasn't pleased with, so I taught myself Fusion360 and designed my own. What I ended up with is a very capable piece of hardware that makes flying the Huey much more immersive and precise. Along the way someone mentioned that having swappable heads would be cool. And I though "why not". So I've spent the last several weeks designing and testing a swappable head coupling that seems to work quite well. I've also designed a head for the new OH-58 Kiowa. I should have a working prototype in the next week or so. Probably before the Kiowa comes out. Then on to the KA-50 head. Here's a short vid of the head (and a couple of the one with a fixed head). I'm really pleased with the way it came out. I will start printing the first "for sale" unit after the Kiowa head finishes printing. As I have a full time job and can't spend too much time on this venture my wife suggested that I make a kit. Then a forum member mentioned the same thing. I will be making a few of these to make sure there are no issues and make an assembly video. I will continue to make them at a slower rate after that, and also make the kit available so that those of you that have the ability can make your own. So here is the plan. 1. make a detailed video of the assembly of the new collective. 2. put together complete "kits" that will have everything you need to assemble your own collective (Price to be determined). I will also put together a printed part only kit for those of you that want to source your own hardware. If you lack the ability to build your own collective, then I am sure there are several people here who will be willing to do it for a fee. We are a community after all, right? 3. Continue designing and building additional heads. I'm open to suggestions. 4. Continue production at a slower pace. Thanks for reading. John

I think it's time to take this thread to the "input and output" forum.

I made some forward progress. The interchangeable Huey head is done. I didn't finish the base because of soldering issues. Trying to solder 22 gauge wire to the back pins of an 8-pin mini din is HARD. It took some thought and searching but I found an answer that (I think) will allow anyone with rudimentary soldering skills to do it. I think the Kiowa head is finalized as well. Without the little side box I ended up at 80mm x 90mm. I drew it up 3 times (large, medium, and small) and settled on small. The tactile 5-way switches seem to work well too. Here's a couple of pics. EDIT: My wife just said I need to print the medium one because the small is too small. So I'll do that and post a pic of the 3 for everyone's consideration. The drawing is the medium one for reference. It's on the printer now.

Dude, That is frickin awesome! Gotta make sure my wife doesn't see it 'cause she would love to reclaim part of the den...

Comparatively, the Kiowa head is a monster. Maybe scale it down a bit. EDIT: Yep, I'm going to downscale it 10%. Right now it's 100mm x 115mm and it's too tight a fit between the seat and Warthog throttle. I had scaled down the Huey 10% as well. and will do the same with the KA-50.

Sorry if I missed your PM. It’s been a very busy month. To cut to the chase, there have been may requests for the collective. I’ve sold the black one and probably the brown one as well. I am currently assembling the interchangeable head one right now with the Huey head. I have the Kiowa head on the printer and will be assembling it (hopefully) later in the week. Once they are both assembled, and the assembly video is live, I will begin taking orders for kits. I will also be looking into adding additional heads.

I use a TM:WH that I cut a loop out of the main spring in with a 4” extension. No curves or dead zone set. The centering action is light enough that I never use trim either. I also use a very balanced collective that make a big difference in precision control. I’m working on a set of pedals now because the Saitek ones are not great for heli flying. John

No worries.

I've built a collective with a hot swappable mount. I have the Huey head done and am working on the Kiowa. What I have now is extrapolated from some drawings and pictures. Does anyone have any dimensional drawings of the Kiowa head? John

PETG is more resilient than PLA. The one with the brown handle is the PLA unit. The one with the black handle is PETG. PETG article https://3dbuildr.com/petg-filament/ PLA article https://3dbuildr.com/pla-filament/ I have one of each for sale. The new design will be printed out of PETG. I won't be building any after these 2. Other than the swappable head one I will use to make the video of course, and that one will be mine. I have an 8 hour a day job with a 2 hour round trip so taking this on full time just isn't in the cards right now. I tried but it just isn't working out. So basically I'm building my own collective with a collection of swappable heads and sharing it with the community. As I don't plan on open sourcing the design I figured the next best thing would to be offering up kits for a lower cost that a completed unit. I think some enterprising souls here may offer to build kits for a fee. So the price should stay pretty much around the $330 mark. This will give me the time to design and prototype new heads. Hope this answers your questions. John EDIT: The kit will consist of all the parts and hardware to build the collective. Some of the plastic pieces will be fitted out. The tube will be pre drilled. All required threads will be tapped out. There will be NO soldering or assembly work done. It will take a greater than basic skill to assemble the kit.

Swappable head coupler.

YEAH! The first PETG one is done. This is the only one of these that I am going to make and sell. I will also be selling the PLA unit that I am using. Each for $275. In all fairness I have to share with you that I am testing a swappable head design which these 2 units will not be compatible with. The swappable head units will be priced differently and will be a self build kit. The drawings I shared in a previous post are of the UH-1H and the OH-58 heads. More heads will forth-coming. As soon as I finish building and testing the swappable head design (a couple of weeks) I will be posting it in the "Input and Output" forum. So armed with this information who still wants one of these?