Extranajero

What a great idea, why didn't I think of that ? :doh:

What are you thinking of as a construction method ? wood, I know - but how will you hollow it out to fit the switches and wiring ?

Having the parallel the same width as the button isn't really an ideal situation, but you may well get away with it. The modellers vice would certainly work really well for the square buttons too. I actually wouldn't mind taking on jobs for the pit building community. I'm working on flight controls for myself at the moment ( it's been a hobby of mine for quite a while ) I've given up gunsmithing due to the insane paperwork and regulations I had to go through, so my machine shop isn't being used nearly enough. If you have good reference materials I would enjoy working with you on the landing gear and fuel refill, just send me a PM with more details, or post them here if you prefer. The stick extension probably wouldn't be possible for me to do, not having physical access to the existing parts it would have to mate with. But maybe theres a workaround for that, who knows ? Good luck with your 99 caps ;)

My pleasure, I'm sure you'll have some helpful advice for me one day ;)

Here, as promised, are plans for a drilling jig for square buttons. Isometric view and a top down view of how it works. You'll only need two pieces of precision ground stock and to drill three holes and tap two of them. Actually the stop piece that contacts the vise jaws could be made from anything you have lying around. In use as long as you make sure that the stop on the end is in firm contact with the vise jaws, and the button is in contact with the head of the allen bolt on top you'll get what we call " repeatability " - enough for this kind of job anyway. Never throw a jig away when it's done it's job, you can recycle them into other useful tools or holding fixtures :)

Here is a drawing that explains ( I hope ) the use of a parallel. Picture on the left without, picture on the right with. A set of machinist's parallels is pretty expensive, but what you can do instead is buy a length of precision ground O-1 tool steel and make your own. The precision ground steel is easily available in lots of sizes and doesn't cost much. Drilling round buttons....hmmm....thats another kettle of fish entirely if you don't have access to a lathe. But it's do-able, check this out - http://www.hobbylinc.com/htm/squ/squ10253.htm I'm pretty sure you can get them cheaper than that, it was just the first link I found. You would use it like this ( I've put a cola bottle cap in there as I don't have any suitable knobs :) ) On the underside is a square boss that you can grip in your drill vise That gives you a solution for holding the knob, but you'll still have to be very careful when marking it out so you find the centre. Once you have found the centre though you can use it as a jig and drill any amount of knobs, assuming they all have the same outside diameter. But if you can find a friendly machinist you could get him to make a centre setting device for you, like this :- Let's say you have 50 knobs to drill, all 20mm outside diameter for a 6mm shaft size. You ask your friendly machinist to turn a dummy 20mm O\D knob from steel and drill it 6mm with his lathe - and that's your centre setting device. Clamp that in the vise and adjust the whole setup ( small vise clamped in your larger vise ) on the drill press table until your 6mm cutter or drill bit enters the hole cleanly, take it out, and you are good to go for drilling your batch of 50. Drilling tapered knobs - now that is more complicated. Holding tapered objects for drilling or machining is quite a challenge. I know how I'd do it, but I have a small machine shop...I'll see what I can think up. I hope all the above is understandable and helpful :)

I live about an hour and half's drive north-east from Almeria, I expect you know that's where the Good, Bad and Ugly trilogy were filmed ? ;) I have never been myself, but I will at some point this year... The purpose of the parallel is twofold, it stops the button slipping down under drilling pressure, but also serves to locate it at right angles to the cutter. If your Dremel router bit isn't leaving a 'pip' in the centre of the hole - or if the 'pip' isn't causing problems when gluing the buttons then scratch my advice on the slot drill. I'll keep checking in on your thread and I'll be happy to answer any questions about machining - I was a gunsmith and custom rifle builder so it's my area of expertise. Building cockpits however isn't :D Tomorrow I can draw up a plan for an easy to make jig that would turn button drilling into a mini production line for you, if you like.

A good way to do this, especially if you have a lot of buttons to modify, would be to buy a milling cutter called a 'slot drill' - it makes a very clean flat bottomed hole. Normally using a milling cutter in a drill press is a Bad Idea ( it can cause the chuck to fall off it's taper ) but just for a plunging cut into plastic you'll be OK. Then to make sure that you get your button square to the cutter and not get an angled hole you might want to scrounge a piece of steel to go into the vice for the button to sit on. An improvised machinist's parallel in other words. Place your button onto the steel, just lightly 'nip' up the vice and you'll see that the button now probably has a slight tilt due to the moveable jaw of the vice moving upwards as it closes. So give the button a light tap with a rubber or plastic mallet to seat it back down onto your improvised parallel and tighten just a little more. Then it's nice and flat. It might sound like a lot of messing around written down like that, but it's very quick and easy to do when you get the hang of the procedure - and every hole will come out right. So it saves wastage and time in the long run. You really are making a great job of your pit, I'll be following your build.

That is exactly what I needed to know, thanks a lot ( I haven't figured out where all the smileys are on this forum yet, so imagine a big Thumbs Up here :D ) I have maintenance manuals for the UH-1 and the AH-1 but they don't say anything about the movement angles of any of the controls. Or if they do, I can't find the information.

Does anyone have references for the angle of movement\travel of a collective lever used in any jet helicopter ? Just going by eyeball alone they seem to operate through an angle of about 45 degrees, but I'd like to get that confirmed.

I remember playing the Microprose F-15 sim in co-op front\back seater mode on the Atari ST ( yeah, ok, I'm pretty old :D ) It was really good fun - being able to do that with modern graphics and systems simulations would be marvellous.

Thanks very much Shagrat - I hadn't looked at the A-10 - I just assumed I wouldn't be able to run it. You are right, there isn't anything to lose...

Hey, I used to own a 205 GTI :D I'm not a sim developer, where did you get that idea ? I know next to nothing about programming. I like to build controls, my skills are all mechanical.

Well I'm now convinced that I need to upgrade. Thanks for everyones advice, it's been very valuable. I can take some of the financial pain away by selling my racing pit, wheel and pedals. I was never much good at sim racing anyway and haven't used it for a couple of years.

Thanks for that, it would be easier and cheaper than buying here in Spain. The prices look attractive, I was recently quoted 54 euros for 2 gigs of DDR2 RAM locally... I suppose I have a budget of about £500, but I do want to spend the least amount possible. Apart from flight sims and Kerbal Space Program the only games I play are turn based wargames which have graphics of the 'cardboard counters on a paper map' type and would probably work OK on a 386DX :)

I'm no programmer but I'd guess that it's a trade off between keeping the graphics up to current expectations while not spending a lot of time and effort optimising them for lower end systems. I can see the logic in that, the bottom line is that they are in business to make money. I'd expect that for every 10 copies of the game sold maybe one would go to a hard core simmer and the other nine to people who want to fly in arcade mode and look at lens flares and fluffy 3D clouds. It's just the way it is. Well, that's my guess anyway. FSX would be a different matter. I usually install that once every 6 months and then get rid of it after a couple of weeks of reminding myself how resource hungry it is compared to the mediocre graphics. I used to fly a little in the real world and I honestly don't ever remember trees and buildings suddenly popping into view at a range of 100 metres :D You would think that Microsoft could do better, given their resources...

I am really into flight sims, mainly the Third Wire series nowadays as I like Cold War aircraft. But the Third Wire stuff doesn't really model systems or flight behaviour realistically ( that's OK, it's the developers choice and he's got his reasons ) and it's not a good choice for simpit purposes. My favourite mission types are SEAD\Wild Weasel and it's pretty obvious that DCS does this much better than anything else on the market, even just going by YouTube videos. You are making a really good point, perhaps it's time to retire this PC and use it as a media centre.

Thanks for that cut and paste, I hadn't even considered reading the specs on the website before posting my question.

Yep, the obvious thing is to download DCSW and try it out - but I thought I would ask first. I live in a very rural area and have wireless internet which isn't always too reliable. So a 6gb download can take quite a while. I'll show some pictures of the controls soon, my camera's battery charger died a while back and the replacement is taking forever to arrive :( Thanks for your help guys :)

I really want to try DCS, it seems ideal for the realistic flight controls I'm developing for simulator use. But my PC is low spec and I don't really want to upgrade unless absolutely necessary - I can use the money far better building controls. What I have is a Core 2 Duo 2.2ghz, 4gb RAM and Geforce 9500 The main issue seems to be RAM, I can't add any more - the motherboard will only recognise 4gb. Should I bother with the 6gb download or stick to DCS:Blackshark ( which runs really well ) ?