Me and my B737 control column

[Michael S]

Hi, everyone.

I have been posting a few times before, but I´ve never really introduced myself. My name is Michael. I´m 20 years old and I live in the eastern part of germany (near the city of leipzig). As english is not my first language, please excuse any mistakes. I will do my best.

I have always been interested in aviation. My father used to be a private pilot when he was a young man. He doesn´t have the PPL license any more (due to the fact that he needed a minimum number of hours flying to keep the license and he was not able to do so).

So I got in contact with flight simulation many years ago. I started with FS95 and "Sierra Pro Pilot USA". Then I had FS2000 and finaly FS9. I had a few years "break". In the beginning of this year I got interested again and for the first time started to use freeware addons and so on. I also got the PMDG 737NG. Flying the B737 was a lot of fun and as the 737 is my favorite airplane I began to think of possibilities of making the simulation more realistic. As I love the manual flying and landing, I thought, it would be great to have a selfbuilt yoke instead of my joystick. So I finally started my B737 project.

In the beginning I tried to make the actual yoke shape myself out of wood. I soon recognized, that this wouldn´t work. So I purchased a used B747-yoke made by simparts. I built a first version of the control column using springs, but I was not satisfied. The springs were not strong enough for the pitch axis and the aileron axis used to swing. So I made a second version, wich was much more stable. I purchased gas struts for the pitch centering and tried a different type of wood (beech wood).

This is a picture of the yoke when I recieved it:



The condition was not very good. One of the trim switches was not working (and is still not) and the cables had been painted. First step was to paint it black and to figure out wich cable belonged to wich switch.
After a few layers of paint it looked like this:




This is how I designed the aileron unit: I used two ball-bearings attached to wood:




For damping of the axis I used two black plastic gears. These were originally used in a CD player.




The hole thing attached to the yoke:
The wooden gear also stops the left/right movement of the yoke.




The pot fitted:




This is the base of the control column:




Control column mounted:
The pipe is just a normal piece of rain pipe.




And my result:



Still to do:

- centering of the pitch axis using the gas struts (110 N)
- pot for the pitch axis
- wiring the interface (electronics from an old logitech pc racing wheel)
- fsuipc settings
- clipboard
- decals

Any comments and suggestions are very welcome.

[choffmann]

Hi Michael,

excellent job! Looks very elaborate.
It is nice to see some more german builders on this site. Welcome!

Chris

[Michael S]

Thanks, Chris.

I have to admit that I probably won´t build a complete fullsize simulator. I am just up to add hardware for my pmdg and I am aiming towards a single seat trainer based on the pmdg. (I know it´s difficult because of the offsets ). I just wanted to add that.

[Westozy]

Well done Michael, I thought I would post this link to my website to show how I made my control yokes. http://aerosimsolutions.googlepages.com/yokebuild

I have dual yokes and my sim can be flown from both sides. Have a look through "Westozy's" gallery pics here at MC.org, there are many pics of my dual control set up and how to do it!



Regards Gwyn

[QF501]

Hi Michael

You have just answered my pondering question on how to create the inner workings of the yoke. My question is do you have any diagrams with measurements and would it be posible to to have a copy Please.

Thanks

Mark H
Brisbane Australia

[Michael S]

Hi, Mark

Yes, of course, that´s possible. I allready posted my plan, but it´s not 1:1 scale:



It´s a handdrawn sketch. I scanded it and scaled it afterwards. I will scan it a second time for 1:1 scale image. I can also send you more pictures and photos. You could pm me your email adress. But I´m not shure if I can do it today. Would it be ok if i send it tomorow?

[Michael S]

My question is do you have any diagrams with measurements and would it be posible to to have a copy Please.

Hi, sorry that it took me so long. But finally I managed to collect as much information as possible and I made a pdf-file which shows how the whole aileron unit actually works. I would highly appreciate if someone would drop some hints on what to add to this little "tutorial" (basicly I don't want to call it a tutorial but I can't find a more suitable word.) Please let me know if there are very basic information missing or if something is not clearly visible in my file.

Thanks in advance.

"B737 yoke.pdf" is the "tutorial" and "origianl plan.pdf" is my origianl hand drawn sketch in 1:1 scale. So if you need any measurements, that are not given in the "B737 yoke.pdf"-file, you can just print out the origianl plans and take any measurement you need. (Unfortunatly it was made with a pencil, so the contrast is not very high )

Edit: The stopping pieces shown at my plans are NOT based on any concrete measurements! The only correct thing is the rotation angle. (50° on both directions)

[Westozy]

This is the same set up as I have used including the pot drive!!!

Regards, Gwyn

Hi, Mark

Yes, of course, that´s possible. I allready posted my plan, but it´s not 1:1 scale:



It´s a handdrawn sketch. I scanded it and scaled it afterwards. I will scan it a second time for 1:1 scale image. I can also send you more pictures and photos. You could pm me your email adress. But I´m not shure if I can do it today. Would it be ok if i send it tomorow?

[Michael S]

Hi, it´s me again.

I´m sorry, for any reason I totally forgot to post an update.

Short before Christmas I finished my control column to a point that I can actually "fly" with it.



I added adjustable stop points using screws (thanks to Ian P. Sissons for his website and this wonderfull idea).
I also added the sliding pot and did the wiring and configuring in FSUIPC.


Here a few more impressions of the yoke...




... and a few pics of my "cockpit"



Since christmas I also have the Flight1/Dreemfleat 727 and the Captain Sim 707 - two more planes to fly with this yoke.

------------------
@Mark: Did the documents I posted help you anyway? Please let me know if you need any further information.

[nax228]

Made by wood, rainpipe and LEGO. Very nice.
Seems like you know your way with pen and paper, why not try to make a model in sketchup? Great and easy tool I know you would master quite quick.
http://sketchup.google.com/