Howdy.I have been prototyping a throttle lever thingy, been doing it very slowly since I tend to get more ideas once I let things "boil" a bit inside my head..This is what I have got so far:http://tigert.gimp.org/vatsim/cockpit-stuff/twinprop.jpgBasically it's 6 levers (2 x throttle, 2 x prop, 2 x mixture) and the feeling seems to be good, the friction is working well.The metal "L"-bracket you can figure out yourself, the levers are 3x16mm or so aluminium profile, they need knobs on the end and I need to bend them to be like in real planes.The white stuff is nylon, before you rush to a plastics shop to buy it for an expensive price, get one of those white bread cutting boards :-)The two metal rods are to limit the lever movement, and one of them goes through all the white discs so it stops those from moving with the levers.The remaining issue is how to hook up potentiometers there, I am thinking the usual approach thati involves slide pots with pushrods. That's still to be designed and done. But I am being happy with what I have so far. Of course this needs a box around it etc... just thought I'd let you know, it's been a bit quiet on the hot summertime, and new stuff is always exciting..Best, Tuomas

Hi,Thanks for sharing this. I have been trying to figure out a throttle unit myself and this looks like the best idea yet I have come across. Could you please post the length of your levers.Thanks,Ed

Um, the length is to be determined still. If you download the "cockpit rescue card" from here:http://www.raytheonaircraft.com/support/pu...rescuecards.aspit contains a vector-graphics (PDF) head-on drawing of the instrument panel and throttle quadrant. Now, when you know that the standard large instrument gauge is approx. 3.11 inches on the outer rim, you can scale the thing accordingly and get a very detailed schematics for the throttle quadrant of a King Air (well, all Beech bigger turboprop cockpits look a lot alike)The PDF is a bit rough since the illustration of the panel is very small, so it is having quite rough representaition, but you can get the basic idea from it, and it's possible to draw a real panel layout on top of it for example.But my quadrant will be somewhat generic, the levers will probably be approximately 15cm long or so. The king air has huge big levers and those wont fit on my current cockpit panel, they'd cover half of the radio stack :-)Tuomas

Thanks for the info.Ed

"white bread cutting board" => BRILLIANT idea !!I tried to slow my throttles down with some foam rubber and found that it made too much noise. Plus it wasn't feeling very smooth.I was absolutely sure that I had to do my pedestall and the levers in it all over again. Also my idea of using the car-engine-drive-string for making rotarys only seems to work fine if you can make absolutely perfect cirkles to fit them on. I find my lever now to stick more in some places cuz there is a bump on the circle.So I'll be making an other system for the whole thing. Also I plan to use a metal board instead of the now used temporary waved hard paper I use.Also I was looking for something to make the top of the throttle levers out. Now I'll use this white material you suggested and drill circles out of it with a clock-saw and glue multiple of those on eachother. The reason why I didn't think of making it this way is that if I would have done this with wood, it wouldn't look as smooth in the end because I find that the clock-saw leaves a lot of rough edges on the wood which can't always be sanded off in a good way.Anyway, I'll still need to think this whole thing trough, but for sure, I'll be out buying one of these boards on monday.