Well here’s the completed throttle quadrant. I’m happy with how it turned out – which is surprisingly good considering how much I suck at metalworking. 🙂
I’m using a standard DE9 connector for the three slide pots that are linked to each lever arm.
Right after I finished the throttle quadrant, I decided it was time to address the shortcomings in the rudder pedals that I built last summer. I was very disappointed in both the toe brake mechanism as well as the size of the pedals. I got lucky and found a pair of gas springs that had a 1-7/8″ stroke with a 40lb compression force. They were surplus and ran me a whopping $1.99 each.
Here’s a comparison between the new pedal design and the old one. The new pedal is on the right.
The pedal design is based on a set of CAD drawings I found on the ‘net, drawn by a gent that goes by the nick Baloo. The CAD drawings were entirely metric, which doesn’t do me much good here – I don’t dare mix measurement systems because I know for a fact it’ll come back and bite me in the ass some day. I drew a new pedal design based on Baloo’s original drawing, but I increased the pedal length by about 1/2″. They’re just about 12″ long now. The pedals were cut from 1/2″ Baltic Birch, which is a 7+ layer high quality plywood.
Here you can see the new gas spring setup. The 40lb force required to actuate the gas spring gives a very realistic brake feel to the pedal. I was very happy with the result. I was also able to re-use the toe brake pots and actuator hardware without any changes.
nice workmanship , especially on the throttle,great to see different types of quadrant
Any chance you could point me in the right direction for the plans for the rudder pedals? Thanks!
Looks like you have a wedding band on your left hand. With the amount of time you must spend on this, I wonder if your wife (& kids?) ever get to see you.
Jay, the plans for the rudder pedals aren’t available. They’re just too cranky for me to let folks build them the way I did. At some point I’m going to create a streamlined version that will be easier to build.
My wife is fantastic about it. I only spend one full day (Saturday) a week working on the sim stuff. Sometimes I’ll work on related side-projects in the evenings occasionally.
g.
Could you provide a link to the Cad file you mentioned for your rudders?
Thanks
Chrs
Chris, the design is so messy and over-complicated I decided to not publish the drawings. When I get a chance I’ll look into designing a simpler to build version.
g.