Viper1970

Slowly... but I'm missing some views from the back Only can suppose here. Created some details at the head and placed POV's and buttons. I will add two additional buttons to the stick the original hasn't, at the empty space in the head top left and the unused button at the back. I also will add a thumb-POV at the throttle, I've only seen on the bugeye tech replica until now. All other throttles have left this clean or only have a button at this place. There are still many things missing like the trigger, POV caps do not match the original and so on...

And ... bought! and also already added to my modules in the signature

Und .... gekauft . Jetzt fehlt nur noch die Kiowa. Hoffentlich klappt die auch! Sieht momentan etwas beunruhigend aus. Man hört gar nix, nicht mal auf Discord.

And starting with the Osprey controls. I already made the shape for the throttle a while ago, but maybe I have to adjust some things, as I have some better photos now. The stick (cyclic) must be done from scratch. And the beginning of the stick. I took my Viper (AH-1Z) cyclic as a start. Looks really at the moment (but that's mostly the fact if I'm starting something new ). Meshmixer will do a lot of voodoo magic here . I hope I can come relatively close to the shape, but it won't be perfect in any way. I also have not all views from all sides. And now after some first rough meshmixing voodoo Did some more sculpting and transform, after this a reimport to TC again and now making some more adjusts to the shape with the use of this program once more. It's always a seesaw between those two programs and can take a lot of adjustments until I'm satisfied with the result.

Oh yes, I know this sort of friends very good. At the time I was building my old pit, I was very, very low on money and used a lot of cheap and easy to cut material for it (had not enough space for all my tools or even the circular saw), so I made a lot out of Styrodur, which is more stable and better to edit as Styropor, and cased it with thin pressboard plates (I used the back walls of old damaged cabinets for this). Only the ejection seat and the frame where my CRT with the little Overhead was placed, respectively the frame beyond the rudder pedals, was made out of wood and very stable. So you had to step over the side wall and also the console, grab the neck-rest of the seat to hold the balance, and stand at the seat before sitting down in the pit. I told it all my friends ever and ever again, that this whole thing is only made of Styrodur and the frame arround is only for the immersion, not to step on it, however two of them have managed to destroy the left sidewall and parts of the console shortly in series. Since then my pit or my projects are "FOR MY HANDS ONLY". If someone else will ever be allowed to use it, it will only be a pit-builder-companion, who knows what kind of work you have to put in such a project.

AV-8B mostly done . I will add the switches in the base at a later time, when I'm really knowing what I would like to have there and what I'm integrating in my side consoles.

I also really hate the time it takes to print bigger parts, especially if you like them relatively smooth and therefore with a small layer-height. For bigger cases or something like this I always use a 0.8mm nozzle with 0.25mm to 0.3mm layer height and set the print speed relatively high, too. But this isn't possible at the HOTAS parts. I already increased the layers to 0.125mm from 0.1mm, took a 0.5mm nozzle instead a 0.4mm and set the print speed to 55mm/s. This is the the fastet setting I could run on my Ender 3 Pro, what keeps the parts good enough in quality. But it still takes about 16-24 hours for one half of a grip and you always have to pray that no sh.. will happen. The longer the printing time, the more the time sh.. could happen . For the HOTAS I use an infill of 60%, cause I want the parts relatively massive and it doesn't make much difference if you use 40 or 60% infill in the time it needs to print. The biggest factor is the layer-height and the nozzle size, even the speed itself doesn't have a real big effect on the printing time, except you slow it drastically down. P.S: And although I have a resin printer, I very rarely use it. I'm a lazy guy and hate the cleaning of it after the printing. I even made buttons and hats with my FDM printer and got really good results. Here I use 0.1mm layer-height a 0.4mm nozzle and print really, really slow with 10 to 15mm/s. Even very small parts were precise and if they had a texture on it, like the paddle switch, it was absolutely clear and sharp in its shape.

Also ich werde mir die bestimmt zulegen. Ich finde sie sehr schön gemacht und es steht ja ausdrücklich auch am Ende des Trailers, dass dies noch nicht die endgültige Version ist. Was man bis jetzt aber sehen kann, gefällt mir wirklich schon sehr gut.

Hi KeyCat, that sound very good!!! I admire your work on doing all this electronics stuff. I also tried this a while ago with Eagle and I have also a very small circuit board etching device, but the results weren't really good . I considered to buy such a small cheap china cnc mill only for PCB engraving, but my little workshop is already bursting at seams. For most of my projects the Pokeys cards where able to do it and they are relatively cheap in price if you choose the one without the terminals. But if you can produce special electronics like you are able to do, this is a completely other story. Great work! I would love to do some teamwork, maybe there are some other guys too, which are interested in it. I always had the belief that if some guys will put there minds and ideas together, we could really make some cool things for our beloved hobby. My CAD (better said 3D modeling) skills aren't very high, rather very low . But I was always able to use things in an unconvential way to get the things done I wanted to have. That's the only talent I'm good in.

As I lived with my son in my very small flat three years ago, I made the living room my hangar. The whole room had the subject aviation. I was happy with it, my son too and there was no wife bleating . She had her own flat. Now things have changed, but she's really very, very tolerant with my hobby .

The pit itself will be more rudimentary, so it won't be near a "replica" of any aircraft. I will try to model some "universal" useable inputs here. All the special functions should be done in VR, or if VR is not possible in a simulation I use, I can also use my Track IR with the trible view. There are also two identical trackballs in the pit mounted beyond the throttle and the sidestick, one left- and one righthanded, to be able to control the systems in the virtual pit. The trible view is a set of old TFT's I was able to get for low. They are running only at 1280x1024 each and the panel TFT is capable of a 1680x1050 resolution. This gives me a total of only 3072x1024 with the trible view, but I'm ok with this. Maybe later I will add some better newer TFT's, but for now it has to stay the way it is. I wanted to have the possibility to fly in both worlds, VR and pancake. Don't know how long and good I can get by with VR. I'm not the youngest guy anymore . And I also use some older simulations too, which aren't VR compatible. I will try to get them running with VorpX, but I don't know if it will work. For other simulations like tank or naval simulations I made the "command-unit" beside my pit. This will also be the place I will run all my old retro sims at and also my workstation then. It has also a trible view with old 1280x1024 TFT's. For retro I will only use the center TFT. Maybe there is a way to run some of the more modern retro games with the triple view, cause I use a Matrox TripleHead2Go in the unit and also in the pit. I nearly worked one year only to get all the old stuff perfectly running on my retro machines with resolutions that weren't possible back those days. I use nGlide here if possible, but running it on Windows 98/Me (yes it runs perfectly there) or Windows XP. I still love those old titles (even the original Flanker 2.5 and LockOn) and wasn't able to do much simming back those days, cause of my work. So I will make it up now. It's more a sentimental thing, cause it really does not make much sense still playing those old titles if you have something like DCS . The pit itself can also be converted to a racing pit if needed. It really was a lot of planning and measuring to get all this under one hood. But since I have no more full size pit, like my old project was, I wanted to be able to do some racing in the pit, too. The main thing for me was to have the aircraft you are flying at the moment right in the hands as real as possible (with a limited budget). That's the most important thing to me. I'm much more on flight behavior and feeling, than on all the system stuff. I also like it to have all of the systems very well modeled, but the flightmodel and the feeling of having the right controls in your hands, is what I like the most. I'm more the dogfight guy as the BVR or AG guy .

This is the rest of the parts I made. Haven't posted pictures yet. Those are the grips for the Warthog convertion to F/A-18C and F-14D (I made a D-Version throttle). The last is the "convertion kit" to make one Warhog to a F-15 throttle.

Once startet, it's like a drug It makes so much fun to be able to make things on your own you never were able to do before all this 3D printing was possible. This is a real game changer in our hobby. Keep in mind to make the gaps for the buttons a little bit wider cause holes mostly will be printed a little bit smaller as you have modeled them. Thats no problem in case of normal round holes, because you simply can drill them a bit out, but here you have to sand this part, what really is an annoying work if you use PLA. I always copy things like such buttons once again, scale them a bit up and use the negative to make the gap.

Actually the throttle of the MV-22B should be the last HOTAS part for now (I wanted to use it with any of the other sticks), but I just found some more detailed photos of the flightstick and a small datasheet of both, the stick and the throttle. So I will do the stick also now, to complete the MV-22B HOTAS . This is really the last control I will do before the rest of the pit is finished. As I have now more detailed photos of the Osprey controls, how could I leave it incomplete?

So, one step further. Tomorrow I will model the cap for the transducer and the POV beside it. After that the grip has to be splittet into halfs and the whole screwings must be done. It is already hollow.

And that's exact the reason I will use a Pokeys board for my TEDAC. It can do what ever you want. You also can save different configurations and reload them to the board. That's also the reason I use TM electronics in my HOTAS to be able to use TARGET. But I know programable boards or keyboard macros are out of fashion

They have nearly the same size as the one used in TM devices (the hole-size is exact the same as the one of the old FLCS). I also use this POV's for my models. Some parts I have slightly modified. I will use a 12x12mm tactile switch for the push function of the 3way and 5way hats and therefore made another mounting frame for it. I want to be the push function a little more strong to avoid accidentally activating it while using the direction functions. I also made a hole in the stamp for fitting a steel nail (head cutted off) in the stamp. Printed parts of this size tend to break real fast, but with a steel core inside it should be good.

Looks really good! TinkerCAD isn't that bad as some people think it is. You can model real nice stuff with it and if you also use Meshmixer in conjunction with it, there is a lot what's possible. After some working with both you will be able to do more and more.

If some of you guys are willing, we can make this "damned" thing in teamwork . I also wanted to make a TEDAC, but there is still so much to do at my pit, so I thought I will do the TEDAC after the pit is ready for flying (at least for one or two modules). At the moment I'm just about to finish my last controls for the pit and after that there is much to print. In the meantime I will go back to my pit and do some work here, but I could also do some 3D modelling from time to time. On my own it's too much work to do the TEDAC at the moment, but if we work toghether as a team, it should be doable. Also keep in mind I'm no 3D modeller, but if there are guys who are more talented as I am, maybe we can make a real good device together.

Just fiddling around with the COMM knobs and the speed brake . The antenna elevation is a simple thumbstick-mechanic but only one axis is used. The second will not be connected and is also mechanically blocked. The transducer on top is also a thumbstick. The hole beside the thumbstick is for a 4way POV. The rest are simple small and medium buttons. One of the medium buttons has a hemisphere on top with a small gap to fit the knobs button. I will simply glue it on top. The small buttons have a hemisphere-frame arround them. I also use this at the Kiowa cyclic and anywhere else, where such kind of buttons are used. Not perfect, but those buttons are easy to get in every electronic shop. The frame for the speed brake is also still missing here. I had to model a new switch here, cause it has an oval shape and there isn't an already done hat available anywhere. It should use the same mechanics as the Cougar uses for it's speed brake, with a switch inside which is momentary at one side. For the COMM functions I also have to make switches and maybe a frame or some gaps in the handle itself. At the moment I'm only testing the space I have to get all under the hood.

Take a look at the Pokeys57U board. It's programmable with DX-button functions or keyboard macros. It has 54 inputs (actually 55, but one is used for the reset function also - I always skip this one pin), but you can use a 16x8 matrix (24 normal inputs will dissapear if you use the matrix) with it which gave you additional 128 functions plus 30 remaining functions, which makes a total of 158 programmable functions. There are also 6 analog axis you can use, which reduces the number of functions to 152 at the end. But this should be still enough for the TEDAC. You can also program press and release states of buttons and switches, even with the matrix. Encoders could also be connected. I use them for my cockpit functions (panels and consoles) and they work perfectly. I also built my old pit with those boards.

Back to the AV-8B . Still a lot missing at the grip itself and I also have to spilt the shell of the grip. The colors aren't the ones used at the printed and finished HOTAS, like with all my 3D models. They are only for a better overview of the layout. It's the second complex thing I made so far, after the AH-64D collective. Most of the work are the whole screwings at the end of the modeling. It looks like not much happened, but that's really the hardest work. I hate it . Maybe I will post an exploded view when I'm finished. Not the nicest one, but if all things will work like the way I've planed it, I'm happy with it .

Fantastic work!!! Very impressive! Should I also .... , no I think my wife will throw me out of the house, if I start to built something like this, also. But that's the closest to real thing, we can get. I admire the work you must have done to make this come true.

Also für den Anfang ist es doch schon mal ganz ok. Wenn man der Sache etwas Zeit gibt kann sich daraus doch echt was ordentliches entwickeln. Schade bei den Mods in DCS (und auch oft wo anders) ist halt immer, dass vieles was dann mühevoll implementiert worden ist, mit dem nächsten Update nicht mehr geht. Da verlieren viele Modder mit der Zeit irgendwann die Lust. Hab das schon so oft auch bei anderen Simulationen erlebt, leider.

And there is much more also. I collected nearly every simulation since the late 80s. There are some DJ-cases full of slim line CD/DVD boxes with all the retro stuff. In the cabinet in my sim-room are about 50 old motherboards and the same number of graphic-cards for retro machines and also arround 50 processors from Intel 386 up to the Phemom series and much more old ram. I also bought all this stuff used or defective and repaired it. Mostly some capacitators on the mainboards were broken or I had to reflow the grapics-chip on the graphic-cards. I'm a simulation junkie since I bought my first computer back in the 80's. That's the truth I was infected with that virus arround 1988 with Microprose's F-19 Stealth Fighter and I never was able to get healed of it .