I had planned to leave this post until later in the yoke build, but since I anticipate that it might take a few more weeks to finish completely, I wanted to post some pictures for the curious. This post is going to be largely content-free and photo-heavy.
First off, I did the electronics for the yoke handles. These have a large number of buttons on them and an 11-wire cable ran from the handle to the yoke innards. This cable had to be cut to take the thing apart, and I needed a much longer length of wire anyway, so I had to re-join it. I looked at a replacement but this would have involved a lot more soldering on parts that I could not afford to damage. My soldering is decent, but not factory-quality. I bought a temperature-controlled solder-station, because my previous fixed-temp iron just wasn’t doing the job. I found I needed a very high temp to work accurately with the high-silver content solder I’m using.
My lovely new temp-controlled solder-station
Joining the wires was accomplished using bridge boards. These are small pieces of veroboard with the right number of tracks for the wires in use. You solder the wires from each cable onto either end of each track. While you can in theory just wrap and join individual wires and then insulate them, with very thin wires such as those used in microelectronics it’s very hard to do so and the cable tends to remain brittle and breaks easily. The bridge board solution avoids that, because once you’ve soldered all the wires down you can cover the board with hot glue, turning it into a solid lump. I inserted a bridge at each end, one of which lives in the assembled yoke handle and the other of which goes inside the box of electronics I made from the CH yoke controllers.
A bridge board used to connect cables with very thin wires
Once soldered, the board is covered in glue to protect the wiring
The electronics box was a large mains junction box I happened to have handy. It was the right size to glue down the CH control boards while also providing a surface to expose the inputs for the potentiometers etc using standard plugs. The X and Y axis pots for each yoke are exposed as 3.5mm stereo jacks, carrying the three connections needed, while I used a pair of 8-way phono socket boards to expose the switch connections for the manual switches that appear on the front of the yoke case, and two of the three extra potentiometer axes on top of the yoke. Since these can be re-purposed for other inputs and controls using FSUIPC later, it makes sense to preserve them. I also cut holes and cutouts for the various input cables – USB cables, cables from the yoke handles, etc. Once screwed together this does a good job of hiding all the wiring. More photos of this in a future post.
The PCBs from both CH yokes are glued into a plastic utility box
The potentiometers connect via 3.5mm stereo jack plugs
The physical mechanism of the yoke is similar to Ken Brand’s design, as I mentioned in my previous post. An assembly with two pillow-block bearings takes the yoke rod and allows it to rotate smoothly. This whole assembly is then mounted on drawer-rails which allow it to slide back and forth, giving us the two axes of movement that we need. The assembly itself is very simple – a piece of very stiff MDF board with batons screwed in place at the sides on which to mount the inner portion of the drawer rails, and then two more batons to which the outer portion of the rails is mounted, which are then held in place underneath wooden planks using steel corner-fasteners, so they can be removed easily.
The yoke-holder assembly in place on the frame
Having built the frame to receive one of these assemblies, I test-fitted it and then placed a yoke rod in it and successfully moved in in both axes – the movement is nice and smooth though I think the drawer rails will need a little bit of oiling to make them perfect. I then replicated the frame and assembly on the other side of the cockpit. Eventually, the two assemblies will be connected so that when one moves, the other moves similarly, and the two yoke rods will be connected with a chain so that when one rotates, the other one does too.
Yoke rod in place and at maximum inward deflection
The yoke at maximum outward deflection
The right-hand yoke-holder assembly
Now, I need to figure out how to attach the potentiometers to the assemblies to measure the axial movement. This will take quite a lot of trial and error, I think. I also need to work out how and where to attach bungee cord – elasticated rope – to provide both resistance to movement and auto-centering of the yoke in both directions. Then I’m ready for a very early test flight!
backbedroompilot.com 
Great blog! This is AKMongo from mycockpit.
I too am modding my CH, although just to extend it, not competely rebuild. I had a question about your wiring solution.
It appears that the stock yoke has a bunch of wires from the switches/hat that terminate in small spring type connectors that connect into a female connector which plugs into the usb pcb. The wires are combined by color that condense 11 wires down into 6 connectors. Could these be combined at the handle end so only 6 wires thread through the handle? Is that what you did with the pcb board?
It appears that should not be a problem, but just wanted your opinion before I started soldering those tiny little things.
Thanks for any input you can share!
Reid
Hi Reid.
You’re pretty much spot on. Both headers on the USB main board are 11 pins wide, but in neither case are they all used. In the case of the header from the handle, I narrowed it down to 7 unique connections that had to be made, rather than 6 (YMMV if you have a newer or older yoke, but both of mine were wired exactly the same). On the original cable, the 11 wires run into 7 pins on the header by doubling up shared grounds, or trebling up in one case. All I did, basically, was combine those wires inside the handle onto the small board I inserted in there, running the two or three wires to the same track on the board, and then took 7 wires out of the other end of the board to run down the extension cable. The cable I’m using is 15-core, as it happens, because it’s being used in multiple places in the project, so all I did was trim back those wires I wasn’t using at both ends, but if you have a 7-core cable then that will do nicely.
What I found handy is that multi-core cabling has standardised colours, so I was able to match up the colouring on the wires from the handle / into the header with the same colour on my extension cable. This makes wiring much simpler since you don’t have to remember what connects to what.
Specifically, the pins / colours I found to be needed were:
Pin 1 – blue
Pin 3 – red
Pin 4 – orange
Pin 5 – white
Pin 6 – green
Pin 8 – black
Pin 9 – purple
The use of the boards at either end of the extension was just to make my life easier. Soldering together microscopic wires like that is far from easy, and getting the joint to hold up under any strain is even harder. Had I been able to buy 11-pin female connectors I could have made up new connections, perhaps even re-wired all the switches at the handle end, to create a single seamless cable, but I couldn’t find them and so by using small pieces of veroboard I was able to make bridge boards which makes life much easier for me. I then covered the board assembly with hot glue to secure it and stop the vulnerable solder joints from being broken accidentally.
Good look in your mod, I look forward to seeing some pictures on MyCockpit 🙂
NH
Thanks for the tips. The soldering gun is warming, and I am steeling my nerve and patience!
I love the hot glue trick, and am going to use it on a board I built with some leds, that is prone to shorting with movement!
NH,
I have the wiring almost complete, but the hat switch is giving me fits. I wanted to be able to have a quick disconnect for my yoke, so that I could maintain it, work on my MIP later, etc. I added a cat5 jack at the handle end, and just beyond the 11 pin header in the casing. Now I can just unplug it to take the yoke out of my panel. The cat 5 jack had push in connections so that I could just punch down with a cabling tool and did not have to solder anything. The standard jack is meant for solid cable, not stranded like ch has, so I had to strip the insulation a bit from the ends to get a good contact. (I guess the stranded stuff flexed enough that the contacts could not cut the insulation as they are supposed to).
Not sure what I have done to the hat, as it constantly indicates right, and will only change to upper right and lower right. The other 5 positions do not register. Not a big deal, because I use TrackIr for view, but it bothers me…
Did you experience any problems with your hat?
I don’t recall if it was the hat or another button but I definitely had problems with some buttons not showing up. Turned out to be a short between tracks on the bridge board.
Nice idea with the Cat5 plug. Never thought of that! Though as you say crimping with stranded cables can be a chore.
NH
Nice build. I did something simular and had tried to Mod a ch yoke to make a column yoke. Yet when everything is complete I cannot get the X ax is to work. Any Idea what pins on the board work the x axis?
Hi Everton.
It’s been so long, I honestly don’t remember. I had a diagram somewhere that I made, but I can’t seem to find it. Since this post I’ve dismantled this sim and moved house and am starting a new build in 2015.
Sorry 😦