...this dampening thing is kickcing my ass.
i have guden dampers, i brought both a compression and extension dampers..
its rated for medium light, 50LB damper...(50LB max, 3LB min)
i have to say, it feels like crap. actually i dont feel anything...like it dosent exist. (30$ down the drain)
you mention that you have the 100LB damper...
when i am lookin at both the guden, avm damper sites, i see all these ratings about light, medium and heavy, i.e. 100LB light damper, or 100LB heavy damper...
my question to you...does your damper give you alot of resistance when you pull up?
m....i like your opinion for feel of the damper that you are using....
hannibal - My apologies for the slow response but I have been out of town. It also looks like you have moved on to other ideas, so this may all be a moot point but I will try to answer what I can anyway.
First, let me say that I am no expert on dampers, by any means. I was simply tired of the effortless feel of a Cougar/TQS throttle arm. I knew that I was going to need a beefier pivot, for a full length collective, so I opted to add a damper, to give it more of a hydraulic feel and make it harder to pull. I also had no intention on using it for anything other that it was designed for...a collective for a standalone, dedicated, Comanche pit based on EECH. Not for other helos, not for other sims, and not for all day gaming. So maybe our varying satisfaction boils down to our expectations?
Was it the best solution? No, probably not. A fully sealed hydraulic system, with some kind of flow controller would have worked better. To keep it all mechanical, some kind of bearing and lead screw design would have worked, too. Both would have been more elegant but both would have been substantially more costly and time consuming to build, too. This was just a simple way to add resistance to the handle.
"Resistance" is the key here. It does not hold the arm in place, or provide an effective positioning system. It just provides resistance to your inputs.
The tension in my pivot point does most of the holding power. The damper helps a little but not as much as I originally hoped. So, the remainder is taken up with the tail springs.
When I read your post, I tore into my collective to see what McMaster-Carr had sold me. Especially when you started citing damping coefficients.....something I didn't even know to consider, at first.
The damper I have is an AVM. The part number on it didn't match anything on the AVM site, so I decided to give them a call. I was connected to the head of the dampers division. Here's what I learned....
- The 100lb dampers (at McMaster-Carr) are medium damping. The 50 lb dampers are heavy damping.
- The 50 lb and 100 lb rating has nothing directly to do with the force, or time, required to extend/compress it. It is mearly a recommendation of the maximum load. It is more an indication of the diameter of the cylinder and shaft.
- The damping coefficient is the indication of the time it takes to extend/compress it. The lighter the rating, the faster the rate. Basically, it indicates the size of the aperture that the fluid will pass through. With a larger hole, you can move faster, and hence the damping would be lighter. Heavy damping uses smaller holes to make the rate slower.
- Dampers need to be in the correct orientation. Extension dampers need to be mounted "shaft down". Where the shaft extends below the housing. Compression dampers should be mounted just the opposite. "shaft up". (This is the reason I had a loss of pressure, near the end of the travel....I had it upside down....Who knew???)
- The resistance a damper exhibits is somewhat based on the force applied. If you move a damper slower than it's max rate, it requires less force to do so.
So for me, it works. It has low resistance when I push down on the colective. This allows me to drop down without alot of force. When making small (or controlled) moves the resistance is much less because of the lower force inputs. It always requires more effort to pull up but it's still comfortable to use, for normal terrain following. And yes, if I'm trying to yank it up quickly then it
is heavy. But that's exactly what I wanted. It should be a lot harder to cut the rotors into the wind like that. It helps to keep me honest. I can't just pop over a hill, bottom it out until the last minute, then slap the collective up to near over-torque to pull it out. For me, heavy controls are part of it. If I were doing a fighter pit, I would try to do g-forces effects, too.
I'm sorry if it's not what you were looking for, or expecting. It does seem more real to me, than very light controls that have no "consequences".
To each their own, right?
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