UH-1 collective head release

UH-1 right seat collective head mounted on the single-engine collective lever

I have printed and assembled the Huey collective head and corrected some errors, here’s the release version. Designing scale stuff is quite hard, its often too little space to fit things into. You will have to use some cable management to build this 🙂 Switches used are 3-way KN3(B)-223A-A3 (spring-loaded),  KN3(B)-203A-A3 (toggle) and MTS-103 A-2 (toggle). The last one is mounted in place of a light bulb and acts as a mode switch. The thumbstick button is used for collective hold mode activation. This new feature is for those who would want to use this lever in a motion simulator, where a rubber band based tensioner will not work, or maybe for people who prefer flying with a very light tension on their collective.  Basically, its an independent adaptive force trim for the collective. The latest software on GitHub fully supports this head, you can use the DCS Huey compatibility mode (which allows for proper engine start and shutdown procedures) with it.

Download it here

Latest software on GitHub

 

What’s next ?

Just a little teaser of what’s coming in a couple of days. The semi-scale head (this one should be very close to the real one as you can see on the picture) for the best sim of an iconic helicopter =)

AB412 collective test print photos and thoughts on software

 

Finished the first test print of the head, and it looks good! Seems like it will be quite interesting from a point of software: with 3-way switches, there will be 17 buttons + 2 hat switches, and if we add a mode switch, it will triple this number. The question is, whether the master controller will be able to poll all this stuff and return values to windows without lags (in windows joysticks have weird limitations of 32 buttons, 1 hat switch and 2 7 axes per piece, so it will have to look as several joysticks to work everywhere). In the worst case scenario, it will be a semi-scale head with 2 hats, 11 buttons, 1 rotary axis and (probably) a mode switch.