Therefore I needed a stick which had a bit more weight and realism. I was fortunate enough recently to have had two flights in helicopters, one of which was a Lynx Gazelle and the other an R44. I couldn't help but notice in the Gazelle how little movement the pilot exerted on the stick in all modes of flight. The end of the joystick was loosely held between the pilot's thumb and first two fingers, his wrist was laying casually on his right hand leg just in front of his crown jewels. I noticed the way the stick came up from the cockpit floor under the chair curving tightly round the pilot's seat. This is crucial to getting the right movement from the joystick. It's no good sticking out of the floor by your feet in front of the pedals. Due to the cost of anything available on the market which would emulate this it seemed a good idea to chop up the CH Yoke I had and adapt that.

The only things I had to buy which weren't already in the shed were 6 x 90 degree angle brackets bought from the local hardware shop for a few pence. The tubing used to make the other parts is just standard UK 15mm household copper plumbing tube and compression joints, and a 12 inch piece of 22mm copper pipe for the base section of the stem, which was put in a vice in the middle and slightly flattened before drilling a 6mm hole for the bolt through the middle to start the whole thing off. As for the cables, the one for the hand piece came from an old modem cable (it had 7 single strands, I needed 6), and the one from the base was an old hi-fi separates cable - two pairs of co-ax, which gave me the four wires needed. The wiring on top of the box looks a lot busier than it really is. There are only actually four cables to be extended, and the rest of the wires between the two pots just needed extending and I just cut them in the middle and extended them with some thicker cable (purely because it was the only thing I had to hand). I then just drilled a few random holes in the wood and poked the soldered ends of the cables into the holes just to hold them apart and in place. When looked at it gives the impression, though, that the wires are going through the top of the box somewhere, whereas in actual fact the two wires are one and the same.

       

When cutting out the plate at the top for the brackets, mark out your plate and leave two bits not completely cut so you can bolt on all your brackets, cut holes, etc. Then just cut the tabs out and you should have a nice tight-fitting gimble. You will then need to remove the center section and trim off approximately 10mm each side for clearance. I then bent two pieces of steel to make two stops, one for each side. Don't make the elongated center hole larger than it needs to be - this stops forward and aft travel exceeding what you require (which is about 3 inches each way from center). I used steel washers as bearings although nylon would be much better if you have some, and I've yet to put some silicon grease on them (I just used olive oil). You can tighten the bolts or loosen them as you wish. Due to the long leverage on the joystick there are no sticky points. Mine works very smoothly.

Next, the most time consuming and awkward part. Once you've dismantled the old yoke (being sure you're never going to use it again), you're going to have to cut and tag roughly 22 different coloured wires. If you don't get this bit right you'll spend hours trying to sort out where you went wrong when you come to trying to connect it all up. There are somewhere in the region of 44 connections which need soldering and the liklihood of finding cables with matching colors are highly remote. I tagged all mine using masking tape and double checked everything before taking the soldering iron to it. And I only had half a bottle of wine instead of a whole one.

       

The bending of the copper tube to go round the seat is easily done with a pipe bender, though I didn't have one so I did it over my knee (and it looks a bit the worse for wear for it). Removing the potometers was simple enough and just a bit of conjuring was needed to mount them in the same manner as they were being used in the CH Yoke up against the joystick (see photos).

The bell crank arms are made from an old piece of 2mm flooring tile which was easily cut and drilled. The reason for so many holes was just to give me lots of variations on the amount of throw necessary to achieve the correct movement to the potometer. The push rod between the fore and aft pot and the stem was just two ball ends bought from the local model shop. You could easily use a piece of steel wire and two 90 degree bends. This gives a nice, non-sloppy movement. Once cutting the right hand side of the yoke and mounting on the joystick, I simply glued on with some fibreglass and a bolt and left overnight. I then removed the switches from the left hand yoke, which I then stuck on the base of the joystick, and changed their positions to switch on carb heat, electric fuel pump, etc.

       

There's about 5 inches sticking out below the plate, of which there are some one inch strips of roofing lead, approximately 2 lbs, wound round the base of the tube to act as a pendulum, held on with gaffer tape. This seems to remove the need for any centralising springs which are so unrealistic in the controls of a real aircraft. It gives it quite a nice, heavy solid feel and helps hold the thing on the floor. I never tried centralising springs because I'm happy with it the way it is.

The collective lever was just something thrown together very crudely and quickly. I'll probably make something slightly better in the future, though this works very well and I'm having so much fun using it I may not bother.

PANIC! Two days before my PPL skills test I jumped on the sim to do some practice landings in the PA28 when I realised suddenly I could no longer fly this aircraft that I've been flying happily on the sim for two years with the yoke. As flying the real one doesn't let you recover very easily, I realised that I can't go developing different habits, even thought it's only a bit of fun on the PC. I now needed the yoke which I'd just cut up. A frantic look on eBay that night to find a second hand yoke was unsuccessful and made me realise that I need a yoke-type adaption. Taking the hacksaw to my new creation I made a cut two inches below the hand grip and fixed on the female end of a 15mm pipe connector. As you can see from the photos the yoke is simply a T-piece to give the bearing, 2 x 45 degree compression joints to form the sides, of which the left hand grip is permanently fixed and the right hand one is simply attached by a nut from the stick to the yoke. Then attach the whole of the yoke to the stick. I glued a wooden dowel in the center of the pipe connection to the T-piece and drilled a small hole in the front of the T-piece which was then secured onto the dowel with a small wood screw. Another drop of olive oil in here and once you get the wood screws just loose enough you can use the back nut to adjust the tightness. This seems to work very well and has no binding.

       

The fore and aft movement remains the same. You need two large washers to lock the plate from moving left to right and this is as far as I've got. What I plan to do, if you look at my sketch, is move the left and right axis pot to a new bracket on the side of the stem and then connect it to the yoke via a push rod or an inner and outer flexible cable. Another way is to buy another 100K pot and leave it permanently fixed and when you ant to change over this can be done with a changeover switch or a simple 3-pin plug, as there are ony 3 wires to be moved.

I suppose I should make a little jacket to go round the base to make it look better but I'm having such fun using it; it makes flying the JetRanger in Flight Sim an absolute dream. Also flying planes like the Extra which need a joystick are also a joy to use and with the long extension lead on the throttle you can easily place the throttle and switches on the corresponding side if you wish to make flying these aircraft as realistic as possible.

       

If anyone knows of any software add-ons for helicopters would they please let me know.

Lastly, the base was designed to fit round the base of my office chair (see photo) so as not to keep moving around. This worked well, although I can't stop the chair from swivelling, would probably work better with a conventional chair which can be pulled away from the desk.

   

I hope you have as much fun as I did. If it all goes wrong - don't blame me!

Steve Lowe
lowecarpets@gmail.com