Hi

I have an ongoing project to convert a X-45 stick into a helo cyclic stick. It's ongoing in that I keep getting to stages of "Yeah, that'll do" then getting annoyed by its shortcomings and doing a bit more. The next thing I want to try to do is get rid of the squirrelly movements in the in-game stick. Obviously as I have replaced the short X-45 shaft with a long one the resulting movements of the stick at the base are far smaller and I'm having to push the sensitivity levels in-game way up.

This works reasonably well in DCS: Huey, which is what I originally started the project for, but is not as good as I would like and in other games - Take On: Helicopters and Cliffs of Dover it's pretty much unusable.

Huey is a pretty touchy sim at the best of times and when there's input that's not coming from me it makes it that bit more difficult.

I remember, years ago, when I went from using analogue sticks to digital my helo flying ability doubled as I wasn't having to fight the noisy input all the time. I'd like to get the same thing here.

I'm thinking of replacing the pots with some that are more accurate / of better quality. Is this the best solution or is there something less drastic that I can do to clean up the signal?

Cheers!

As you point out, you have made the problem by going to a long shaft with the resulting reduced arc of movement for the pots. Possible solutions that come to mind:

1. Go to a shorter shaft extension by mounting the joystick base up higher. That will increase the arc of movement of the pots.

2. Incorporate gearing to get more pot rotation for the same amount of stick deflection.

3. Changing sensor type might help some. Hall Effect sensors can typically be substituted for potentiometers, with improved resolution.

if you want gears, go to sdp-si.com. most of the gears i get are spur gears with a 20 degree presure angle and 48 detrimental pitch.

for my cyclic project, i am going for a 2:3 gear ratio, and my collective is using a 1:1 gear ratio

noise can be a product of play on loose bolts/shafts, worn pots, wrong pots, mismatch pots... like i know CH Products use 100K ohm pots, Saitek uses 50K ohm pots.