Yeah, I just worry when there's a single producer and a ton of popularity for a product. Obviously

Yeah, I just worry when there's a single producer and a ton of popularity for a product. Obviously some, like Slaw or Milan, do just fine with it... but others fall apart. The fact that Walmis has already shipped 100 units breeds a lot of confidence though. Just hope he can maintain that (as there's still 400 more till my turn!)

I just wish I had found this community sooner! I had no idea what FFB bases were capable of till I found (thanks to vague mention on a reddit post) some of Walmis's videos last week. The Rhino just seems like the perfect next step for my pit.

JIGGAwest•5/30/23, 1:21 AM

anyone fly the gazelle with the VPforce base? The force trim system seems to behave erratic at times.

Caprice•5/30/23, 2:07 AM

Hello, here to probably ask the annoying obvious questions that everyone asks.
How much does the Rhino cost?
What are the current estimates on lead times?
Thanks and sorry for being that guy.

BB34ker Yeah, I just worry when there's a single producer and a ton of popularity for a ...

ddrake1984•5/30/23, 2:32 AM

Its been on the hotas discord for a while

JJIGGAwest anyone fly the gazelle with the VPforce base? The force trim system seems to beh...

ddrake1984•5/30/23, 2:32 AM

Gaz is being remodelled

Dddrake1984 Its been on the hotas discord for a while

B34kerOP•5/30/23, 2:34 AM

Yep. Missed it somehow. New channels show up there now and again and I don’t always give ‘em the look I ought to. Glad to be here now though

ddrake1984•5/30/23, 2:34 AM

Maybe I should ping everyone when a new channel (official) is up

ddrake1984•5/30/23, 2:35 AM

I think I’ll do that in future

ddrake1984•5/30/23, 2:35 AM

So no one misses out

B34kerOP•5/30/23, 2:35 AM

Yeah might be a good idea.

B34kerOP•5/30/23, 2:36 AM

Part of my issue to is having my first child about 8 months ago, so not paying as close attention as I had in the past

CCaprice Hello, here to probably ask the annoying obvious questions that everyone asks. ...

Bob Bushman•5/30/23, 2:37 AM

Its mostly in the faq, €800 euro for the unit +shipping, check the #

faq channel for diy kit variations.

Lead time is currently written down as 12 months, but considering its probably closer to two years now..

ddrake1984•5/30/23, 2:38 AM

Ah!!! This is prob more important than a first child, after your first few years of the child, you’ll be tired/sleep deprived, The RHINO wont make you feel like that, its joy the whole time and after 18 years you want to get rid of your kid (kick them out of the house), the RHINO you dont want to get rid of

B34kerOP•5/30/23, 2:39 AM

I’ve definitely been thinking the same thing

ddrake1984•5/30/23, 2:40 AM

Seriously tho, congrats and train them well in the ways of flights sims

Bob Bushman•5/30/23, 2:40 AM

There's a reason your friends vanish from the face of the earth once they have kids. And then you see them again 12 years later looking like zombies with ruined clothes and the "I havent slept a full night in 10 years" complexion.

B34kerOP•5/30/23, 2:42 AM

Haha thanks man! Definitely looking forward to the day I can introduce him to the pit

BBob Bushman There's a reason your friends vanish from the face of the earth once they have k...

B34kerOP•5/30/23, 2:43 AM

I’m starting to identify with this statement….

B34kerOP•5/30/23, 2:45 AM

I know playing Microsoft Flight Sim and Wing Commander 3 on my Dads computer back in the 90s is a large part of the reason I’m here now.

Bob Bushman•5/30/23, 2:52 AM

Same, well my old computer, my father would barely touch a calculatorif he had to.
Little less flightsim,more descent, wing commander, and starlancer, even had the sidewinder ffb stick at the time.

Then I found Elite Dangerous in 2015 fell hard into that, got myself a hotas rudder setup for that, ended up with full virpil twin stick kit.

Number481•5/30/23, 3:30 AM

Thought some folks in here might appreciate my collective design I've been working on for the past couple days.

I said I wanted a FFB Collective. I ordered a single motor kit.. now its time to put my mouth where my money is

I borrowed some concepts from my current DIY Collective, which in turn borrowed many a lot of concepts from (and started its life as) the Beyond-3D collective design.

Modeled with a fictional left-handed Warthog grip because a 3d model of the Virpil Alpha-L (non-Prime), which I will put on it, does not exist :D...

Still quite a bit of design work left and then a lot of trial and error getting the parts so they print correctly.

Main shaft will be a 30mm aluminum tube (24mm ID, so a good amount of meat to thread into).

Also did a little animation because... why not...

NNumber481 Thought some folks in here might appreciate my collective design I've been worki...

walmis•5/30/23, 4:37 AM

Looks awesome, but I can imagine there would be some backlash on the gears.

ddrake1984•5/30/23, 6:10 AM

If can do similar to rhino and use a pulley?

ddrake1984•5/30/23, 6:10 AM

Id be interested in a VPForce Collective

JJIGGAwest anyone fly the gazelle with the VPforce base? The force trim system seems to beh...

Anthony•5/30/23, 7:49 AM

Yup, gave it another go when I got my Rhino up and going.

It’s buggered beyond belief. I’m hoping for the best regarding their finally reworking the FM… but considering how many years they had their fingers in their ears and just shouted insults at everyone who pointed out the flaws, I’m not going to expect anything

Jon (Bounty_V)•5/30/23, 7:54 AM

They threatened to dox someone I know who was pointing out said flaws

Jon (Bounty_V)•5/30/23, 7:56 AM

Being mean to your customers who can't possibly know why things aren't being fixed or are delayed because you don't tell them (eventually did, health issues with 1 key employee etc.) isn't a good look imo

Jon (Bounty_V)•5/30/23, 7:57 AM

opinions on the dev aside, "supposedly" FFB is included in the OH-58

Jon (Bounty_V)•5/30/23, 7:59 AM

If the new FM for the Gaz makes FFB enjoyable to use I'll definitely pick up the module

VPforceBot•5/30/23, 8:52 AM

:package:

RHINO #0112 Has Shipped!

JJon (Bounty_V)They threatened to dox someone I know who was pointing out said flaws

Anthony•5/30/23, 9:54 AM

Classy!

Bob Bushman•5/30/23, 11:03 AM

Why is there so many devs in the flight sim community who thinks taking customer management tips from Derek Smart was a good idea

(And if you catch that reference you a deserve a prize)

AndyHill•5/30/23, 11:03 AM

I guess I'm a rather prejudiced and not very open minded person, but I'm not holding my breath in excitement waiting for the '58

AndyHill•5/30/23, 11:04 AM

at least derek knew how to advertize his product

Bob Bushman•5/30/23, 11:04 AM

It's an instant.
"Trial when available with no intention to buy" for me

Anthony•5/30/23, 11:10 AM

Pretty much yeah

Anthony•5/30/23, 11:10 AM

Even if they knock the Gazelle and the Kiowa out of the park, I’m not getting it

Anthony•5/30/23, 11:11 AM

There’s a limit to the lies, rudeness and sheer incompetence

Wwalmis Looks awesome, but I can imagine there would be some backlash on the gears.

Number481•5/30/23, 11:33 AM

As I started thinking about the design, the direct gear drive was one of my primary concerns. It's how it is in my currently in my production collective, however the main gear is just driving a smaller gear attached to a rotary damper which contains the magnet being read for the axis.

The precision is fine, but you can "feel" the gears through the handle. A lot of that though is because the geometry isn't quite perfect. The main parts on that unit are all referenced from imports from the original design. Which I found out as I set out to build the FFB design, are every so slightly off.

I sat and looked at my current design for a good while, thinking about how I could incorporate a pully driven system, but couldn't think of a good way without making the whole contraption significantly larger, or more complex.

But that was before I ended up just re-designing all the parts, as opposed to modifying and referencing my existing design. Now that I am looking at this again after reading your comment, I think this might be possible...

AAnthony Yup, gave it another go when I got my Rhino up and going. It’s buggered beyond ...

JIGGAwest•5/30/23, 3:14 PM

I got a reply from polychop yesterday that Forcefeedback wasn't enabled. But the next major update(June?) it will be available. So we'll see what the new flight model has in store.

NNumber481 As I started thinking about the design, the direct gear drive was one of my prim...

Number481•5/30/23, 4:11 PM

This might work... now I just have to figure out how to design the gears and adjust the positions to work with a timing belt...

Boosted•5/30/23, 6:56 PM

Polychop (and a few other devs), didn't have access to a ffb stick and it's not baked into DCS as you'd think. That's why it doesn't work. Since there's a new FM coder and he just got a ffb, it's being added while he reworks everything.

Number481•5/31/23, 1:35 AM

Can anyone offer any advice on pulley design/positioning with HTD 5 belts?

I found a nice parametric pulley design project for 'Inventor' (30 day free trial FTW) that makes it easy to spit out HDT 5mm pulleys of any tooth count, and tells you the PD of the completed pulley (also found one for Openscad). So, its easy enough to model the corresponding PD circles in Fusion at a given distance from each other, draw the tangent lines and measure the path length.

Question I have is, How near to spot-on does the "path around the pitch diameters" need to be to the advertised length of the belt in order to achieve the proper tension? As close to spot-on as possible without being under? A little bit longer to increase tension? How much longer?

Hoping someone who's been through this with their DIY kits can chime in

Comrade_Weng•5/31/23, 2:32 AM

@_gunzablazin I use Creo and started by sketching my drive system. I set the perimeter to be fixed at 450mm and allowed Creo to control a variable to make my geometry work, in this case the lateral distance of my driving pulley from the centreline. I used the nominal pulley diameters. I provided slotted holes centred on nominal position of the small pulley to allow installation and tensioning. Not much tension is required. The belts will not stretch under hand loads or the really small loads that this system generated.

rn_image_picker_lib_temp_d064c21a-ceae-42bf-a0ad-ed3d64584887.jpg

Comrade_Weng•5/31/23, 2:33 AM

You can see the computer variable dimension here, didn't realise it was obscured on the other image

rn_image_picker_lib_temp_08208d8f-f7bd-4102-b5ca-06e49e90da3c.jpg

Comrade_Weng•5/31/23, 2:34 AM

Slotted holes centres on the nominal position.

rn_image_picker_lib_temp_4f53c88d-639a-4616-ae0a-c7f7bf2662ac.jpg

Comrade_Weng•5/31/23, 2:35 AM

Following installation, the drive motor sits exactly where I designed it to sit, in the middle of the slot.

CComrade_Weng @_gunzablazin I use Creo and started by sketching my drive system. I set the per...

Number481•5/31/23, 2:53 AM

Thanks a ton! Sounds like I am more or less on the right path, just using a more simplistic approach with more simplistic tools. I imagine that's probably something you could do in Autodesk Inventor, but I probably don't have time to learn it well enough in my 30 day trial..lol.

My approach thus far, trying to nail a belt length has been something like this... If I go with the slotted mounting hole approach, it makes it a lot easier...

Comrade_Weng•5/31/23, 3:02 AM

You will mainly need the slots to get the belt on. To calculate your perimeter there is an equation in the gates handbook from memory. They also have a free app called design power which will do it for you.

Troll 🇸🇪 🇳🇴•5/31/23, 11:43 AM

I’m going to fasten my belt with screws, in the large pulley. That way I can just cut the belt at the nearest “cog”. The large pulley doesn’t rotate more than +/- 20-30° anyway.

TTroll 🇸🇪 🇳🇴I’m going to fasten my belt with screws, in the large pulley. That way I can jus...

Number481•5/31/23, 4:51 PM

Thats definitely an option, and probably a lot easier than sourcing a specific, potentially obscure length closed loop belt. I've seen 350mm belts as low as $3 and a 355mm belt was $12 from the same seller..

Yeah, I just worry when there's a single producer and a ton of popularity for a product. Obviously

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