Force Feedback Collective

This is my collective with interchangeable heads. When I’m flying helicopters it’s a collective; when I fly warbirds I’ll be able to swap heads and lock the arm in place.

The heads

Currently I only have the Huey head. The warbird head is a work in progress. It’ll be WWII inspired, likely based on the Spitfire. I guess I’ll build a few…

The Huey head is based on the one from hc265ma.org, modified to make it easier to print and to fit my requirements. It needs to be redesigned slightly because it sits too high, which makes it a little tricky to operate.

Quick release

The quick release uses a camera QR plate with a pogo connector for USB. The plate locks the head to the arm, and the pogo connector carries the signal across the joint without any exposed cable.

Throttle twist

The throttle twist is an AS5600 magnetic encoder, completely concealed inside the grip assembly.

Grip

The grip is Siraya Tech TPU Air. It’s magical stuff.

Force feedback

I used a centering spring effect with aggressive gradients to actively reduce the range of the collective and also to make it stay fixed in place. Plus some static damping.

Downloads

• collective.step (20 MB): the public STEP model of the collective

Now I’m truly hooked on helicopters. A proper collective really makes all the difference, and along with FFB on all the flight controls it makes flying much more intuitive.