New collective

[Shawn]

I got tired of not building anything so I went ahead and built a helicopter collective. I'm hoping to eventually build a helicopter seat (cyclic and pedals) that I can wheel up to the computer when I want to fly. It's just a generic rendition of a collective but it does the job.

http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/2981/img1447a.jpg

http://img580.imageshack.us/img580/4341/img1449i.jpg

[bussgarfield]

What a novel idea. Nice one.

Keep us posted on this one and how it is all put together.

Have you incorporated a twist grip for the throttle - hehe.

Gary

[Joe Cygan]

Great build!

[RojanTrojan]

Nice work Shawn.

Looks like a very well designed unit. Looking forward to seeing the cyclic and pedals. Great to see something different.

Cheers

Rhydian

[Shawn]

Thanks for the nice comments guys, it was good fun getting back out in the shop doing something i wanted to do ie, not something on the honey do list. :) I didn't incorporate a twist grip throttle but that is in the works for the second generation collective. I learned enough from this build to make me want to start over again and improve on the design. The one interesting thing that I did find and that might prove useful to other builders was a cheap "flap/lid stay" that I used to provide resistance to the collective lever. I needed something that would keep the collective in place and looked high and low for a dual action damper but couldn't find one. I settled on this $5.00 lid stay and it works great.It wouldn't be strong enough for something like a yoke but to add some resistance to throttle levers, etc it might prove useful. Here's a link to the part I bought at home depot. http://www.homedepot.ca/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CatalogSearchResultView?D=901973&Ntt=901973&catalogId=10051&langId=-15&storeId=10051&Dx=mode+matchallpartial&Ntx=mode+matchall&N=0&Ntk=P_PartNumber

[bussgarfield]

A simple cheap solution to a problem that probably caused a lot of head scatching. How ingenious.

Great tip and one that could have many uses for other builders, I'm sure.

Gary

[fl-student-pilot]

Wow Shaun, that is very impressive. You know, I would really like to see that, along with a cyclic and anti-torque pedals. I bet that would be something! I am looking for flight controls, such as that, for my flight sim. Unfortunately, I cannot find any.

[Shawn]

The cyclic and pedals are now in the works, I built a test version of the cyclic gimbal that works but weighs a ton! @ student-pilot, the collective was actually pretty simple, read through the forums, buy a bodnar board and have a go at building one. If you have any questions feel free to PM me or post in the forums. You'll be surprised at how easy most of this stuff is.

[Ronson2k9]

I had seen a pic of an office chair that had been outfitted with helicopter controls, collective and cyclic anyway. It was over at the Hovercontrol (http://www.hovercontrol.com/) website. He had used handrail tubing and had u-bolted it together and to the chair. Made it look like the chair was built to fly helicopters with. I went back there to find the chair but no dice. I'm thinking though if you had mind too you could do the same thing using car exhaust tubing and u-bolts found at any auto parts store. Painted white or black could look pretty spiffy.

Just a thought.
Ron.

[Shawn]

I used 1" electrical conduit for both the collective arm and my cyclic shaft. It's easy to bend with an electrical conduit bender, drills easily and looks fine once it's sanded/painted, plus it's cheap and readily available. I wore a mask and sanded the conduit outside because I think the coating on the conduit isn't that good for you?

There are a number of people who have simply extended the shaft on a joystick to create a cyclic. One of the problems with extending a joystick shaft is that the further you extend the shaft the greater the deflection of the controls is required. You can get around this somewhat by re-calibrating your controls to recognize a shorter throw distance but then your not taking full advantage of your potentiometers and will lose some precision. I found this tutorial at flightsim.com that addresses this issue in a rather simple way.

http://www.flightsim.com/main/howto/joystick.htm