I’m pretty happy with my CH set, but it does have its limitations. Generally, from what I gathered on more expensive gear, it’s awesome when it works, but fragile, difficult to repair and most of all, very expensive. So, I occasionally wondered, would it be possible to build myself a HOTAS? A lot of people make DIY hardware of various sorts, and my father has a 3D printer, so possibilities are here.

Unfortunately, I’m no 3D modeler and no mechanical engineer. Fortunately, someone else had this idea already, called Simchair IV:
http://hc625ma.org/
I’m currently in process of waiting for components to build it (some were ordered from China), but I already started thinking, could such a device be made for flying the Viper?

1. Stick:
That’s the big one. Simchair IV has a center stick. Now, it does look pretty awesome, but it’s completely unlike what the Viper uses. So, a force-sensing stick gimbal would be needed. Another matter is the grip itself, I saw no designs for a 3D-printed F-16 grip. That one would have to be designed from scratch. I know there are force transducers for Arduino, so perhaps this could be used, but to really nail the design would require, aside from CAD expertise, familiarity with the real thing, which I don’t have.

The hat switches, at least, are a solved problem.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3452944/files
The B8 grip from Simchair IV has a nice solution for the dual-stage trigger, though the trigger itself would have to be modeled.

Another thing I’d like to look into is a Hornet flight stick. The hat switches above are not designed with the ability to press them down in mind, but perhaps it’s possible to mod them to include this capability. If that could be done, outfitting the Viper stick with a pair of these would be of great help to those who’d like to take the Hog for a spin once in a while. There is an F-15 stick body out there, so it might be a good starting point for that one. I’m also thinking about figuring out a Russian-style brake lever, for mounting to the stick frame.

2. Throttle:
Obviously, we’d want a Viper throttle, and luckily, there’s one:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3447345
It doesn’t seem to be meant as a PC-connected HOTAS, though. It also seems to missing detents. Fortunately, the license is GPL, so perhaps it could be remixed.

I would also be interested in some sort of dual throttle suitable for the likes of Hornet, A-10 and Tomcat. I’ve found no projects like that, and considering how these things work mechanically, that’s not an easy matter. The switches that I linked to in the stick could be used, and a KY-023 ministick with a custom cap could, perhaps, be used for the TDC, but the biggest problem is designing a throttle with such long levers that would be both printable and actually work. Also, Simchair-style magnet-based hall sensors would interfere with each other in most configurations I can think of, so a solution would have to be found for that.

3. Pedals:
There’s this, printed and tested by oakdesign, so I’d say that’s covered.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3475445
Simchair also includes a set of pedals, however these have no toe brakes. They are only suitable for helicopters and Russian aircraft with a lever-actuated brake (WWII British ones use this system as well).

So, what do you guys think? I think that a Falcon BMS-brand HOTAS for 3D printing at home would be an awesome project.

It’s certainly better to work with high quality samples, but think about it: we are primarily talking about radio voices. You’d have to normalize the voices and then apply a filter to make it sound more radio-like, which would mask slight imperfections. Echoes might be a problem, but they can be mitigated, and better microphones can do that on their own to some degree. IMO, we should be aiming for authenticity. The F-16 doesn’t have a professional recording mike onboard, and it’s not going to sound like anything from a recording studio, even without things like KY-58 making it even worse.

I think the best way to find out what we can get is to try. Compile a list of all lines to be recorded, agree on quality requirements, and then post it somewhere prominent, asking for a few trial submissions. When I looked into the files, it seemed they had a lot of lines, but not overwhelmingly many. I think it’s less than what goes into a fully voiced, story-based DCS campaign (or one for Freespace 2 Open, another game with a modding community that has record of amateur VA work).

Why not call for volunteers on the forum? They won’t quite be professional quality, but do we really need that? There’s not much acting skill involved in saying things like “Golf”, “November”, “Two”, “Lead, you’re on fire” and “Leave the fat one for me.” All those people would need to do would be to say (and record) the list of lines the same way they would say them when flying in MP.

TTS is also pretty good these days, especially if you’re not expecting it to emote. I’d say, the LSO dialogue actually sounds better than the old sound clips. Real aviation dialogue is usually pretty deadpan, so it should work pretty well for that, and it would essentially allow anything to be said by the AI, just by adding it to the list of phrases. This is a big advantage, because with real VAs, the next time you want to add another thing for the pilots to say, you’d have to track all the VAs down and hope they’re all up for an additional line or several.

Depending on how long the list actually is, I might be up for that sort of thing. I’ve got a bit of an Eastern European accent, though.

@Stevie:

You sort of have to watch these guys, because sometimes they get overstocks and sell things at really good prices.

Yeah, and they charge 75$ for shipping alone (to where I am). No good prices for me there. I’d rather make my own controls, 3D printing is capable of producing parts with tight tolerances, the buttons are most definitely doable, though a bit fiddly to design.

The people at OpenHornet state that hats in the Hornet, at least, have a tactile click. If that’s not the case, then the “joystick as hat” solution from Simchair would probably work best. I could add 3D-printed guides, to prevent diagonal movement and constrain the travel. An analog solution has another advantage: it uses up two analog pins on an Arduino, versus four for a genuine hat. Granted, it there are less analog pins overall than digital ones, but this allows you to cram more digital buttons in.

I’m not in the US, my chances of finding US switches available in my country are exactly zero. Nevermind at a reasonable price. I’ve actually experimented with printing buttons before, with a common tactile button and a spring from an old ballpoint pen you can get really nice results. The stick already has a two-stage trigger, too, the biggest problem would be finding a spring to emulate the real forces, which are considerable (if you know an easy way to DIY a spring of arbitrary dimensions, that’d help).

The only thing that eludes me is the hats. The real ones have quite a bit of throw (15 degrees or so), but also a tactile click, plus, in many cases, a button (fortunately, the button one seems to have short travel). They’re also pretty small, so a contraption consisting of a microstick with pots removed, plastic guides and a few tactile switches would likely take up too much space, in addition to being a huge crock.

I was thinking of making the F-16 stick, finding a model looked like the hard part, but it turns out someone already did that:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4544115
It looks pretty functional, though I’m thinking of modifying the buttons to get proper travel. Hat switches aren’t realistic, but I discovered making a hat switch that would actuate in a realistic way (long throw, basically) is hard.

Or you can try to make one.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3447345
Of course, if you want it in metal, it could get costly. However, the nice thing about 3d-printed stuff is that you’ve got full control of the build quality.

Nice work. Mine is even smaller, lighter and simpler (that was before I had access to 3D printing):

That’s an AA battery housing glued to a board. Under the tape are three old Russian resistors. I used one of these large paperclips to hold the LEDs. It doesn’t have any electronics, not even an off switch. Won’t win any beauty contests, but it works just fine.

I’m actually looking into making my own, DIY limited displacement force-sensing base. The idea is quite simple, a 6mm rod anchored on one end and mounted to an 10mm cylinder (short piece cut off a rod) on the other, fitted into a GE10 bearing. On the other end, an 8mm hole is drilled, into which a long M8 screw in screwed in, for mounting the stick. A plate just above the bearing creates a mechanical stop (this would need incredibly precise placement). The rod has 2 or 3 tensometers attached to it, and the whole mess is wired to an Arduino through tensometeric bridges (readily available). In addition, a plate would be attached right near the rod, to provide additional resistance when pulling the stick (this is to get the same response profile as in the real thing).

My problem right now is the length of the rod. There’s a full-on replica project on Viperpits which I took my inspiration from, but it uses a flex rod made out of rather expensive tool steel. I’m pretty sure the same response could be achieved by a normal construction steel rod (of the kind I can get cheap at a hardware store) of a different length, but the calculations required eluded me so far. Bending moments are very much not straightforward to calculate. There’s also the frame, which I’m not really sure how to do. The forces are too great for anything but metal, but I don’t have a CNC machine, so there’s no much I can do with metal but bend and drill it (and even that’s a lot of work).

BTW, funnily enough, from the project at Viperpits I learned that the real F-16 stick, contrary to popular opinion, is not force sensing (early prototypes might have been, but it turned out some displacement was needed). It uses LDVTs, which are transformer-based high precision linear position sensors. People think its a force sensing stick because its main spring is a great big metal rod and the throw is very small. However, as LDVTs are very expensive and need AC power to boot, so it’s easier to make the replica force-sensing.

So, I finished building Simchair IV, more or less, minus the pedals and some helo collective parts. I’d say, amazing piece of kit. What’s more, the software is pretty extensible, and it uses Ethernet plugs and cables for hooking the peripherals up. I can certainly recommend this, both as a controller and a base for DIY projects.

Yeah, even in BMS, if the AWACS is gone, your IFF is little better than what they had in Vietnam. Barring some sectors far out north with “shoot anything that doesn’t squawk mode 4” ROE (says so in the briefing ), you don’t want to go AMRAAM-happy on something just because it doesn’t respond on IFF. You can get tally with a TGP, so you can get a positive ID from much further off than the Phantoms could in Vietnam, but going from there to ACM is a matter of seconds.

IRL, I suspect that even with AWACS, you don’t always get good ID unless someone gets tally, though with advances in radar imaging technology this might change.