Saitek Cessna Trim Wheel mod (AP sync)

[Artem Crum 5]

Hello gents,

 

Recently I've bought the Saitek Trim Wheel and like many others faced the problem with trim position synchronization after AP deactivation. There is no good software solution for this problem as this device report's itself as joystick with the fixed analog axis, even though this axis is actually simulated from a digital encoder. Saitek engineers deserve a bit of damnation for their decision not to output encoder ticks as a couple of joystick buttons along with simulated axis.

 

Here is how the Trim Wheel looks inside:

 

As you can see, it is based on mouse-like sensor system.

 

And the idea of this mod is to convert this trim wheel from joystick axis into mouse scroll wheel and then set FSUIPC to it as a trim (you need registered FSUIPC for that).

 

The initial idea was to put mouse sensor in place of Saitek's one. Here is how it could be done.

 

Disassembling common USB mouse:

 

"Wire out" the scroll wheel sensor:

 

A bit of usual insulating tape:

 

Putting them inside:

 

After settings done in FSUIPC trim wheel works... but it works too slow - you will need much more than 9 full rotations to move trim through it's full range. You can change scroll wheel trimming speed in FSUIPC ini, but it will make trimmer move with steps (not smoothly) and this feels even worse.

 

So the other idea is to connect original mouse scroll mechanism with trim handle directly, like this:

 

This is just a proof of concept and you can make it more accurately, but after all it works just fine! No need to change scroll speed in FSUIPC ini - it works as smooth and with the same speed as original analog axis.

 

And the nice lighting as a little bonus:

 

The downside of this solution is that you need your sim window to be focused to make scroll-wheel trim work. And the other one - I believe you will not be able to use mouse scroll wheel on the gauges.

 

The better solution is to place encoder knob in place of mouse scroll wheel and connect it with simple joystick controller or to any existing controller in your setup. But this will require much more efforts.