Hey Fellow Pilots:
This is the work of a week or so of tinkering around. I cut about 3 cm from each piece and then glued them together. However, the tension adjuster is still intact and hidden under the diamond cut tape. The Joy X and Y are the levers. I plan on putting the Joystik in a MSFFB base. I made the levers out of sheet styrene and painted them with a spray can. I got some wooden balls at a hobby store and painted them with Tamiya model acrylic. I am very satisfied to have all the buttons of the X52 on the left. I can work the Red lever with my pinkie while I holds the throttle.
This work was inspired by this thread, http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3733240/X52_MS_FFB2_Hybrid#Post3733240
Special thanks to Bearcat99 and Paradaz for thier inspiration and for sharing thier knowledge.


ST side by marklopez996, on Flickr


ST Top by marklopez996, on Flickr

That's excellent, great innovation there......

You're giving me more ideas, I might just have to scour ebay again for another X52 Pro - I think I wasted a lot of potential functionality in my first button box mod.

Potentially, you could run the throttle and twistgrip (rudder) from the MSFFB to the throttle. I may still do that. Why not, after all you already have to run 11 wires over to the throttle.
I may do this with a DB25.
HEADS UP! SCART cables rock for mods like this.

Thanks for your comments.

Maico

SCART!! Liking the sound of that.

I am in joystick hell My second fail. I moved my Saitek X-52 stick to my MSFFB. My buttons on the X52 joy have lights and I can even change the color or dim the lights on the joy but I get no commands. I believe I have too much resistance or something. Really not a happy bunny. I will now try running CAT 5 like you did and hope its better than the DB 25.
Damn, I am soooo close.

Good luck, those wires are fiddly little buggers........

It will be worth it if you can get it working, for the DCS Huey and Blackshark especially it's much better than a Warthog hands down.

I think it's unlikely that resistance is the culprit here, it would need to be very high to drop the signal below logic levels. I'd check the wiring for open circuits or mismatches.

You've probably done this already as part of your troubleshooting but I would leave all the casing wide open and not make anything permanent until you have tested the functionality.

Are you soldering or just twisting the wires together to make the extension? Either will work fine, it's more out of interest. Is there a possibility there is a circuit board shorting against any other metal components? I wrapped all the internal circuit boards with electrical/insulation tape to make sure that any metal on metal touches wouldn't create additional problems.

So glad you guys jumped onboard. Solder is my friend. No metal on metal. I had a bad day and had to put it all away. I will get back to it and get onboard. So frustrating but soooooo good. I need to make this work.

One thing I learned is that sometimes it is better to cut a wire and solder to it to extend it rather than just replace it entirely. It means more work, especially if you use heat-shrink tubing to keep the cabling neat, but it means you always have a colour reference handy.

Stick with it Maico however frustrating it is......after putting everything together and then pulling all the wires out on my first attempt I was close to putting the whole lot in the bin as I worked into the small hours one weekend. I think a 20 minute job turned into 6 hours at one point lol

The sense of achievement will be magnified once you get it on its feet and you simply can't beat a good force trim