1 hour.
I finished changing out the on-off switches and toggle on the other Infinity stick grip. Now both grips will have the same configuration.
And this is what the finished product should look like:
Tested for ergonomics. This works just fine.
But there’s a problem. Remember that big fat blue cable in the first pic? There’s no good way to get it out the bottom of the stick, and on the right side, it’s pretty much impossible. I may have bitten off a fair bit of work for myself here, but I need to find a solution. One thing is for certain, and even though a lot of guys have done it, Van’s says “Thou shalt not drill holes in thy control stick, especially near the holy pivot.” The reason for this is that with a hole drilled in the stick, the yield strength of the tubing has just gone down the crapper. You can argue all you want about the likelihood of someone putting enough force on that stick to break it off at the hole, but I’d hate to be doing a high -g (for me anyway) maneuver and have the stick fold up.
So what to do about that fat blue cable? I have two issues, one is the exit out the bottom of the left stick. The cable chafes on the rod bearings connected to the ailerons, so that’s no good. The other is that on the right side, the stick is designed to be detachable, and it’s going to be, because the missus likes to knit and read books, and she’s not going to have a good time doing that if there’s a control stick waggling where she’s holding a book or a big-ass pair of needles.
In that blue cable are sixteen 20AWG wires, six of which are ground wires (earths, for my Commonwealth readers). I have read of several builders who have stripped off the blue outer cover and the shield, then connected all the grounds together in the upper cavity of the grip, which thins out the wire bundle considerably. This will allow the wires to exit the bottom of the control stick on the pilot’s side. On the passenger’s side, there’s no getting around it, there’s going to be a hole drilled in the stick for wires to exit, but not the honking 5/8″ monster required for the full cable, blue covering and all. That will also require some kind of multi-pin connector, such as a CPC circular connector or a DB-15, so I can detach the stick easily. It’s already sounding like a lot of work, but fortunately it’s not a messy job, and I can start/stop it at leisure.
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