Saitek AV8R Aviator extension by starfighter81

Last crawled date: 3 years, 4 months ago

Decided to upgrade my flight sim equipment and build some kind of cockpit sim chair.
Now that i have throttle quadrants and pedals, it was time to give my good old AV8R some TLC and a little makeover.
To make it less 'arcade' and more 'sim' this (crude) extension was made up with tinkercad.
It is not pretty nor a design highlight, just functional.
The twist function for rudder will be disabled!
Instead i mounted the encoder on the base (see pics), to use it e.g. for trim or cockpit lights. Same with the two throttle levers. Unfortunately the potis only have a very limited range of operation near the middle and cannot be calibrated...
When apllying this mod, you need to unpin the connector for the grip and feed the wires through the extension. But I recommend to extend the wires because the original loom will be a tight fit or could maybe even be too short!
The holes in the extension are designed to be used with little screws to secure the base and grip.
But the tight fit allowed to just use the original shaft in the grip with some double sided tape around the extension to eliminate wobble.
Same on the base, the extension was just twisted on so no need to drill a hole. Just be carefull not to break the gimbal!
Hope someone beside me can use and enjoy this...
Cheers!