HELP: CH Throttle Quadrant Issues

[John Cook]

Pete

Happy New Year!

Having some trouble with programming CH Throttle Quadrant and FSUIPC. I've read multiple posts and tried the suggestions, read the Church article, read FSUIPC manual, read CH's (useless) manual - still have trouble. After six days of configuring this thing I have had partial sucess - primarily due to your fine program - so Thanks for that.

I've purchased the latest FSUIPC (3.44) and am having mixed results. I wasn't getting anywhere without FSUIPC - apparently my throttles don't work without it. In FS2004 using the KingAir 350's throttle view I can see my Throttles now move accurately and produce the wanted BETA effect, The Props levers also work and Feather, The left Condition lever which is lever 5 from the left (U axis I believe) has no effect on the left engine or on the quadrant graphic on the screen. The right Condition lever works as it should. At first I thought there was no signal coming from lever 5, however it shows movement within the CHManager utility - so there is a signal. FSUIPC however, gets nothing from it; I can't set reverse, min or max values. They're all zero.

I don't know if that is enough for you to go on - hope you have some idea about lever 5 (left engine condition) I'm outta ideas. Thanks.

[Bob Church]

Did you check the Sensitivities in the Flight Sim sensitivities dialog? FS has a tendency to set them to zero. It will still let you assign them, and since they are actually working the CM calibration/test panel will see them, but they get set to zero before FSUIPC gets a peek at them

- Bob

The StickWorks

http://www.stickworks.com

[John Cook]

Hello Bob

Thanks for replying. I was about to comment on my latest findings and FSUIPC settings for that lever. However, per your advice, I went back and checked and lever 5 (mix 1) sensitivities were all the way to the left (not the way I had set it). Resetting it I was then able to see some improvement however it was reversed, so I set invert from within CHCtrlMgr and then setup the values on joysticks page 4, finally getting the right settings appearing for min, idle and max. Things appear to be working. Thanks so much for that suggestion!

Here is another question: When moving the levers for throttles and props the from detent forward toward max there is a fair amount of physical lever movement, maybe 10 - 15 degrees before any associated movement is seen on the panel's throttle graphic. Q: Is this normal? What settings should I tweak to see a more immediate response? THANKS again for your help and HAPPY NEW YEAR.

[Bob Church]

Hi John,

>> Here is another question: When moving the levers for throttles and props the from detent forward toward max there is a fair amount of physical lever movement, maybe 10 - 15 degrees before any associated movement is seen on the panel's throttle graphic. Q: Is this normal? What settings should I tweak to see a more immediate response? <<

If you're using the CM in Mapped Mode, there's a "Deadzone" setting on the right half of the screen when you're programming that axis. That sets a width around the detent where no action takes place. If you're in Direct Mode, no map running, then there's a tab at the top of the calibration dialog titles "Throttle Settings" which has the same sort of deadzone setting. The difference is that the setting on the tab is for Direct Mode, the one in the Axis Dialog goes along with the Map. They default to "4", but you can try dropping them down. They can go lower to the point that you start to see "out-of-detent" behavior before you're out of the detent. Usually, it's that the two detent buttons start getting unstable that says you've gone too far. Also, the two center values in FSUIPC set a deadzone around that same area, and that is likely to add to the deadzone that the CM puts in. It could result in the thing requiring a bit of movement before it registered with FS. When I was doing the setup for the article for when the CM was present, I didn't need to set a deadzone in FSUIPC, the two center values were the same. I just let the CM deadzone handle it. Either one should work, but the CM values do affect the detent buttons so cutting that to zero probably won't work too well.

The panel graphic itself does seem a little "laggy" to me sometimes but it does respond. The throttle puts out 256 steps (more or less) of resolution, but the panel graphic undoubtedly moves a lesser number of pixels, e.g. one pixel is two or three (or maybe more) increments on the throttle, it's not going to want to move immediately, though I'd expect that that effect is fairly small. Other than that, I can't think of anything that would cause it to happen. Does any of that sound like it might explain what you're seeing?

THANKS again for your help and HAPPY NEW YEAR.

You're certainly welcome, John, and a Happy New Year to you too!

Best regards,

- Bob

The StickWorks

http://www.stickworks.com