B747-400 Heading/Bank Angle/Sel rotary?

[Guest]

Does anyone know where I can find a an encoder that matches the functionality of the B747-400 Heading/Bank Angle/Sel knob (regardless of price)? It has to be dual concentric and have a pushbutton on top.Any help would be greatly appreciated!Best regards,Pesach(KJFK)

[Guest MikePowell]

Pesach,Two industrial manufacturers of dual concentric rotary encoders with push switches are Grayhill www.grayhill.com and Cole Instruments www.cole-switches.com Their websites hopefully will give some information on distributors.Mikewww.mikesflightdeck.comInfo for simpit builders.

[Guest]

Pesach,I just got 2 62C2222-02-060P Dual Concentric Optical Encoders from Grayhill for $84 each. They have a push button feature on the inner shaft. I'm using these for the GNS530 GPS that I'm building for my Cessna 172 panel.Regards,Jim

[Guest]

Hi Jim,Thanks for the info! IS that part number correct? Doesn't show up on the grayhill site.Best regards,Pesach(KJFK)

[Guest]

In the real aircraft these are actually sofisticated optical encoders with more potential than a concentric encoder. See the picture below of the one I was lucky enough to salvage. And oh yes, if you try to buy them, they're quite expensive!PS: Its the one at the very top. The two red concentrics below it are ones commonly used for such things as Com1, Nav1, etc.Michael

[Guest]

Hi Jim...I noticed you said you were adding 530 GPS for your Cessna. Is this a real plane or are you building a cockpit. The reason I ask is I am trying to understand how to add knobs/dials/buttons to 3rd party add-on GPS software so I don't have to use a mouse in my home built cockpit.If you are adding buttons/knobs and dials could you please share a little more about how you are doing this ?Thansk...and Happy New Year...JB

[Guest]

Hi Pesach.Change the P to C. I bought mine from Newark Electronics not Grayhill. Newark's part number is 33C3001, that's right off the invoice.JB: We're going to try to buy a front bezel from Garmin, then we'll add the push buttons. We already have all the knobs. We'll interface this using a Hagstrom Keyboard Emulator. I'll post some pics as we progress.Michael: According to Garmin, this is the same optical encoder used in the GNS 430 & 530.Regards,Jim

[tigert 0]

>Hi Jim...I noticed you said you were adding 530 GPS for your >Cessna. Is this a real plane or are you building a cockpit. >The reason I ask is I am trying to understand how to add >knobs/dials/buttons to 3rd party add-on GPS software so I >don't have to use a mouse in my home built cockpit. The commercial add-on GNS530 for FS2002 has an option to map every button press to a keyboard shortcut. Then you can just use your favorite method of creating keypresses from buttons and rotaries to hook into that. Download the demo and try it out, that way you can see if it will work for you.I'd do it with FSBUS, but you can do it with keyboard emulation too (though I dont know how those concentric shaft encoders work? Are they BCD or the phase-shifted code? Might need some additional gear to get those rotaries hooked up on the rest of your hardware) - anyway, once you have the rotaries themselves working, you can do it with keystrokes for at least for that GNS-x30 FS2002 add-on.Curious btw, also RealityXP announced a GNS530 add-on, curious and funny to have two add-ons, both commercial, to bring the exactly same GPS to FS2002.. I wonder which one works better, and what the price for the reality-xp version will be..?http://www.reality-xp.com/main.html#newsBtw, can you get database upgrades for these? It'd totally suck if you couldnt get the new navigation data - a cool GPS is not useful without latest information...TuomasEDIT: actually I am not sure if this version uses the garmin simulator program like the current GNS530 add-on does..