Saitek Cessna Trim Wheel

cichlidfan · May 6, 2012

Anyone using, have used, one? Opinions? In particular, I am interested in whether it is jittery or not. I figure with 9 turns, sensitivity should not be an issue.

I have an X-52 and I found the slider to be really bad but the rotaries were a bit better. I just bought, and about to return, a Saitek throttle quadrant and tried to use it for trim in the Mustang. Some of the time you could just watch the trim indicator needle vibrate back and forth, sometime the jitter was just enough to wiggle the knob without actuall moving the needle any noticeable amount. All three axis's were useless which is why its going back and I am looking for an alternative.

I am also considering the CH throttle quadrant but I don't need all the funcionallity and it may even be too wide to fit where I would want to put it.

Any advice and experiences are welcome. Thanks.

MTFDarkEagle · May 6, 2012

I don't have one of those, but a friend with whom I fly weekly has one and he's very pleased with it.

Regarding the TQ: If you find the CH TQ to have to much stuff on it, you can also have a look at the saitek TQ. That one I use. The pots are not very good, but I use the axis for things like gear , landing lights, flaps, refuelling door, etcetc.. Not vital functions to flight. And on that respect I would recommend it.

cichlidfan · May 6, 2012

I guess you missread this part:D

I just bought, and about to return, a Saitek throttle quadrant and tried to use it for trim in the Mustang. Some of the time you could just watch the trim indicator needle vibrate back and forth, sometime the jitter was just enough to wiggle the knob without actuall moving the needle any noticeable amount. All three axis's were useless which is why its going back and I am looking for an alternative.

I might try the trim wheel. I am going to spend more time flying with the warthog (standard hat for pitch and roll and friction slider for rudder) an see how it goes. Even if the wheel is good, then I have to decide to use it for rudder or pitch. Really trying to avoid two wheels but I suspect that is where I may endup.

MTFDarkEagle · May 6, 2012

Regarding the TQ: If you find the CH TQ to have to much stuff on it, you can also have a look at the saitek TQ. That one I use. The pots are not very good, but I use the axis for things like gear , landing lights, flaps, refuelling door, etcetc.. Not vital functions to flight. And on that respect I would recommend it.

I guess you missread this part:D

See my bolded ;)

cichlidfan · May 6, 2012

See my bolded ;)

OK, misunderstood how you said that. The thing is, I have a G13 and a Warthog (not to mention programmable mouse and main keyboard) so using a TQ for things that are mostly open/close or on/off is just a waste of desk space for me. Now if I already had the Saitek TQ without the option to return it that might be different.

Oh well, first I need to give the pony a bit more time.

Thanks.

EDIT: What the heck, I went ahead and ordered the trim wheel.

If I don't like it I think I will have to build something.

Edited May 6, 2012 by cichlidfan

metalnwood · May 6, 2012

A few years back I made one, heres some of the insides. Of course now days you would just use a 10 turn pot and not bother with pulleys to gear it down..

cichlidfan · May 6, 2012

A few years back I made one, heres some of the insides. Of course now days you would just use a 10 turn pot and not bother with pulleys to gear it down..

Very nice, and beyond my skill set, but yes I am glad that multi-turn pots are easy to find.

Thanks.;)

cichlidfan · May 7, 2012

Gotta love Amazon. Trim wheel will be here less than 24hrs after I placed the order!:D

Not that it will help me get down the runway any better.

MTFDarkEagle · May 7, 2012

Nice ;) Let us know what you think :)

cichlidfan · May 8, 2012

Well, the very first thing to notice is the trim wheel has no stop at either end that you can feel. The second thing is that there is not a speck of jitter that I can see, in the sim at least. I have not fired up a joystick testing program yet though. If the pots on the TQ were this solid it would have been almost great (I would have liked a lot more friction).

Without modifying the axis except to reverse it, it takes one full turn of the wheel to move 5 degrees (I am talking about elevator trim here) which is about one third of a turn for the wheel in the cockpit. For now I am going to leave it that way and see how it goes. It is easy to move quickly but has enough friction for reasonable control.

I don't have any complaints except for the damn giant bracket (the whole thing is rather large) that holds it to the desk. That is going to have to change or I am going to need knee surgery. It isn't cheap for a single axis but my pedals were four times as much and only three axis so I guess I am still ahead.

PeterP · May 8, 2012

You can also mount the bracket at the other side -turned by 90°. - maybe this is more convenient.

But I would like to encourage everyone to get a old Hi-hat stand from a drum-kit and modify it with other drum-kit parts (I spend 15€ on it - directly in a small music-store) to build something similar like I did for throttle and other things like the Trim-wheel :

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=86015

A)It frees up you desk

B)It is much more ergonomic

(Now it's enough of my wisecracking tips.. ;)...)

Question: Would you be so kind and give us the axis readout min/max of the Raw/DX values with DXTweak2 >>> http://www.wingmanteam.com/latest_software/gadgets.htm?.

And I'm especially interested in the smallest steps the axis reports when you turn it.

Up to now I can confirm that a full turn should move the needles 10° in the Mustang.

So you may want to set this up in this way.

>>> Trim Wheels - turn/deflection ratio ?

Originally Posted by PeterP
Can someone of the testers tell me how many times I have to turn the appropriate trim-wheel to get a 10° deflection reading on the scales ?

I want to build a trim-wheel box with working scales like on the attached image, and I heave to know the correct ratio to get the right gears - so that my build will react the same like the trim-wheels in the simulation.

Currently it takes one full turn of the trim wheel to move the needle 10 degrees. Of course, the model is WIP and this may change in the future.

About the potentiometer in the Saitek-Throttle-Quadrant:

Yes they are really of very low quality.

I opened up my throttle quadrants last week and also each potentiometer similar like in this instruction:

http://cougar.flyfoxy.com/faqhardware.php#Topic3.1

And removed oxide from the contacts with a scalpel.

Now they show no jitter any-more - lets see how long this will hold until I replace them completely.

Edited May 8, 2012 by PeterP

cichlidfan · May 8, 2012

Mounting the bracket on the side won't work either, at least not with that bracket. No, I will come up with another way of securing it, at some point.

I have that utility and I can gather data for you tommorow. I want to get my G13 config sorted out tonight.

I was going to hold off playing with the curves until I am more comfortable with what I need to trim the plane. Right now having it more sensitive than the sim is probably to my advantage but time will tell.

As for the TQ, if it had been older and had pot issues I would have been OK with it, but being brand new, it was just unacceptable, it is already in the mail on the way back.

Right now I have it set up with the wheel for elevator trim, the slider on the Warthog throttle for rudder (with some axis adjustment) and the POV hat does the ailerons, which works ok so far.

Edited May 8, 2012 by cichlidfan

MTFDarkEagle · May 8, 2012

Thanks for your insights! :)

I might consider picking one up.

cichlidfan · May 8, 2012

Here you go Peter. I saw not a single sign of spikes or jitters while testing either. Just FYI, one full rotation of the wheel produced 108 (+/-1) units of raw travel, so you get slightly less than 9 1/2 revolutions from min to max.

Minimum

Middle

Maximum

One Unit of Movement

cichlidfan · May 9, 2012

Thanks for your insights! :)

I might consider picking one up.

After playing with it a bit more I am quite happy with it. It really does feel good when you turn it though I have no idea how it compares with a real Cessna trim wheel (as Saitek claims).

Of course, it should also work quite nicely with FSX though I have not tried it yet. To busy with with our new toy, which is actually not trying nearly as hard to kill me now!:D

PeterP · May 9, 2012

Thanks for the data!

Taking into account that Saitek wants to see this device in every flight-school around this globe , they made sure that it has a stable read-out and a decent resolution.

I can only hope that they learned a lesson and will re-visit the Throttle Quadrant and upcoming products with the same care.

BTW : Aren't you as curious as I/we ?! - and want to open it up just to show us the mechanics inside ? :music_whistling::P

Edited May 9, 2012 by PeterP

cichlidfan · May 9, 2012

BTW : Aren't you as curious as I/we ?! - and want to open it up just to show us the mechanics inside ? :music_whistling::P

Indeed but at a glance it appears to be glued, or are their screws hidden somewhere. I really did not look that close, it was on the clamped to the desk right away.

I was assuming it was going to be razor saw operation.

If it was half the price I would buy another right now and cut it open.

EDIT: I do have a good selection of fine blade hobby saws too!

PeterP · May 9, 2012

Only tip that I can give you is that the cover of TQ is held together by 4 screws at the underside of it (The deeper holes that need a longer philips. All other holes -4 by each side- are to mount the bracket).

...

I also made a big search all around the web according the interior of it - but didn't found anything.

cichlidfan · May 9, 2012

I might not have time today but if it has screws then I am willing to open it and photograph it. As I said, I never really looked.

PeterP · May 9, 2012

No need to hurry - I'm just very curious , as you said : It has no stop.

and I know that it need drivers to function correctly....(please correct me if I'm wrong, I got the info from this review: http://www.flightsim.com/main/review/cesstrim.htm)

I have the slight impression that there is a optical-wheel inside, just like in a mouse...

So maybe this Saitek-trim-wheel is nothing more than a big Mouse-wheel with out buttons and optical X/Y axis.

(and this doesn't have to be a bad thing - its just clever! Madcatz -the owner of Saitek- builds mouse-hardware since decades)

And I'm also able to turn a Mouse-wheel via PPJoy (a Joystick emulation software) into a DXaxis...

So I developed the idea to get 3 cheap mouse and connect them to a hub and modify the hardware- so that I will have a working Trim-box with 3 axis and 6buttones for around 20€ hardware costs...

And I don't have to mess around with gears - as I can decide my self which resolution each digital axis should have - and how many degree a turn will deflect the e.g. rudder..

And all three mice will be recognized as one Virtual controller - via PPJoy Joystick-remixer.

I hope you could follow my thoughts.:)

A demonstration what can be done with PPjoy:

Edit: I just looked up in a old cupboard - and viola! - I have three old wired optical mice...seems that Igor and I have to go up into the dark tower again to breath some live into some dead matter! Well , lets wait for the next thunderstorm! Muhahahah!

Edited May 9, 2012 by PeterP

TWC_SLAG · August 18, 2014

I have the same trim wheel but, for the life of me, I can't get it to work on the FW-190D.

Can you give me the steps you used to make it work?

Thanks,

badfinger

Well, the very first thing to notice is the trim wheel has no stop at either end that you can feel. The second thing is that there is not a speck of jitter that I can see, in the sim at least. I have not fired up a joystick testing program yet though. If the pots on the TQ were this solid it would have been almost great (I would have liked a lot more friction).

Without modifying the axis except to reverse it, it takes one full turn of the wheel to move 5 degrees (I am talking about elevator trim here) which is about one third of a turn for the wheel in the cockpit. For now I am going to leave it that way and see how it goes. It is easy to move quickly but has enough friction for reasonable control.

I don't have any complaints except for the damn giant bracket (the whole thing is rather large) that holds it to the desk. That is going to have to change or I am going to need knee surgery. It isn't cheap for a single axis but my pedals were four times as much and only three axis so I guess I am still ahead.

Olethros · August 19, 2014

The real FW-190 didn't have trim tabs connected to wheels in the cockpit like the P-51, but rather an electrical motor with a worm gear that moved the entire horizontal stabilizer up and down like a modern airliner. This electric motor was operated with a simple toggle switch on the left console marked "Kopf lästiger"/"Schwanz lästiger" - head heavy / tail heavy. So I assume it isn't possible to assign vertical trim to an analog axis in the game.

It should be possible, however, to use the Saitek programming software to assign the trim wheel to output directional key presses.

cichlidfan · August 19, 2014

The real FW-190 didn't have trim tabs connected to wheels in the cockpit like the P-51, but rather an electrical motor with a worm gear that moved the entire horizontal stabilizer up and down like a modern airliner. This electric motor was operated with a simple toggle switch on the left console marked "Kopf lästiger"/"Schwanz lästiger" - head heavy / tail heavy. So I assume it isn't possible to assign vertical trim to an analog axis in the game.

It should be possible, however, to use the Saitek programming software to assign the trim wheel to output directional key presses.

I have never tried to program it with the SST software but the wheel is 9+ turns with no mechanical stops, so programming it might be problematic.

Olethros · August 19, 2014

Unless the trim wheel is radically different from my throttle quadrant, then it really couldn't be simpler. Set the axis to "directional key presses" or whatever, choose which key command/macro to repeat as the wheel moves up and another one for when it moves downward and then adjust the sensitivity or, more precicely, how many times the commands are triggered per revolution of the wheel.

Just how well it works in the game, however, is another matter entirely.

Raven Morpheus · August 19, 2014

Don't know if anyone has mentioned it (sorry, I haven't read all the thread) but you can build yourself a trim wheel device with 3 axis for less than the price of the 1 axis Saitek Cessna wheel.

All you need is -

1 Leo Bodnar BU0836A joystick board (£25).

3 10k ohm 10 turn linear potentiometers (I bought mine on ebay for about £2 each).

Some knobs/dials/wheels (~£2 each). Personally I searched for wheels and gave up and bought 3 knobs with a dial like edge to them.

Some cables. I bought some properly made ones from Leo Bodnar with proper connectors (@ £1.50 each) but you could easily just use plain cable from an old USB cable and solder direct to the board.

An ABS or metal project box. Mine is an ABS one, black, and was less than £5.

A soldering iron and some minor soldering skills to solder one end of the cables to the legs on the pots. A "helping hands" tool may also be handy for this. I had never soldered in my life and I've managed to do it so don't be put off - watch a couple of youtube tutorials, I did.

A drill and bits to drill a few holes (1 for the USB port, and 1 for each potentiometer shaft/screw thread to fit through).

It really isn't difficult, especially if I can do it and you save yourself a ton of money, you basically get 1 device to control all 3 axis for less than (or equal if you go with really expensive parts) the price of 1 Saitek Cessna 1 axis wheel, and from what I've read around the web it's no less accurate than the Saitek device.

Edited August 19, 2014 by Raven Morpheus

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