Work on the build has slowed mainly because I need another set of hands. The last 3 months have seen only ~20 hours of work. In the meantime, I've obtained new control sticks from Tosten with their CS-8 "Soft Touch" finish grips. The grips are locked in place with a hex setscrew which themselves each have a jamnut.
As seen above, the 22 gauge wires are terminated in Molex (04303-00001) tin female terminals with the included 12-pin Molex (043025-1200) male connector. Though not included, this setup mates into wires that are terminated in Molex (04303-10007) tin male terminals using a corresponding 12-pin Molex (043020-1200) female connector. Tosten provides a wiring diagram (though the commons are shared between the hat and button switches via the white wire and no green wire is included).
The CS-8 is an 8 function grip: Four-way hat switch, a trigger, an index and two face buttons.
Here is my planned button configuration:
- Hat switch up/down: Elevator trim
- Hat switch left/right: Unassigned (future aileron trim?)
- Trigger button: PTT
- Index finger button: A/P engage/disengage
- Left face button: Intercom (GMA-240) comm swap (replaced with a GMA 245 on 12-Aug-18)
- Right face button: Transceiver 1 (GTX-200) freq swap
The Tosten stick (on right, below) has a slightly different shape than the Van's stick (on left, below). The former being a bit shorter to accommodate a full size grip, terminating at the base of the grip.
The Tosten sticks come pre-drilled #29-ish at the base. That would make it easy to match drill into the CS-00007-L/R Control Stick Bases (see page 36-10), if I hadn't already done that with the Van's sticks. So I had to pull out the Control Stick Bases from the airframe and match drill them to the new sticks. Turns out, it's not easy to get the drill bit on the same trajectory as original holes, so I had to ever-so-slightly increase the diameter of each hole on the exiting side. With just the bolts in place, without nuts, the sticks are still locked in place and don't rotate since the entry holes are the correct diameter, so it's a non-issue. The Control Stick Bases were then re-attached (much easier to do when you have this toy).
Not sure how your GRT systems works but if it is similar to a Garmin system, I would not want to be without a CWS/AP engage button on the stick.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the catch. It's been fixed. GRT A/P does have engage/disengage toggle. Much appreciated!
ReplyDelete