Throttle Quadrant

The picture on the left is the centre section of the TQ which is mounted both Throttle levers, the 100K pot is on the right and the servo’s are mounted onto the board using “Yacht” connectors and aircraft model type ball connectors at each end of the push rods.

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I looked around for a TQ that I could buy, however my budget at the time wouldn’t go that far, so had to start making one for myself......!

I searched on the Internet night after night and finally stumbled across some AutoCAD drawings for a TQ made out of MDF or something similar, great MDF is so easy to work with.

I printed out the AutoCAD pages to “real” dimensions and stuck the paper to a big piece of MDF and cut around the drawings.

I used 8.0 and 10.0mm bolts & nuts to get the correct distances between the various “plates” of the design, then started to install the necessary hardware to:

a) Drive Auto-throttles with Servo’s

b) Enclose all the other switches, and potentiometers needed

The picture on the right shows the right hand side of the centre section, note on the right hand throttle lever I have included a push-rod which is attached to the right hand “Reverse Thrust” lever and closes a micro-switch when used, this triggers the engine reverse thrust process after landing, when operated.

Below; a collection of pictures showing various stages of the TQ’s construction:

All finished and attached to the TQ column with decals fitted, the Throttle levers are now motorised, using the FS2Phidgets programme and Phidgets boards.

The “Spoilers” lever is also connected to a small servo, which activates automatically when the aircraft touches down and the reverse throttles are in use, they retract again automatically when the throttles are opened to taxi after stopping on the runway.