Does your Honeycomb Yoke have detectable dead zones?

[MarkDH 234]

Please only respond to the poll if you have a Honeycomb Alpha yoke. I'm not asking if it's a problem, I'm just after a rough sense of how many people can see any slack at all in their axes.

Thanks.

[monica6211 178]

I have the honeycomb yoke. I do notice a detectable dead zone for each axis. For pitch I can feel it, but roll is so smooth that I can't feel it at all. If I go into device properties calibration page, I can clearly see the dead zone for each axis as I move the controller. So it is a definite "YES" for me.

[scubaboy 0]

Yesterday a person from Honeycomb recently posted on their Facebook page that the reason some yokes have a deadzone, and some do not, is that some of the early production units were calibrated incorrectly at the factory, giving them a deadzone they should not have. My yoke from the original preorder has a 5mm deadzone in elevator, and a 9° deadzone in aileron (5% of total rotation!). Also, I have found out that the yoke has a built-in "hidden" calibration routine that can be invoked to recalibrate with no deadzone at all - but those that have been told this procedure have been instructed to not make it public, as they are concerned a user could screw up their yoke even worse.

[MarkDH 234]

1 minute ago, scubaboy said:

Yesterday a person from Honeycomb recently posted on their Facebook page that the reason some yokes have a deadzone, and some do not, is that some of the early production units were calibrated incorrectly at the factory, giving them a deadzone they should not have.

Yes, thanks.

[SergeyPe 92]

Mine has a 6-mm deadzone in pitch axis which exactly matches the mechanical "return-to-zero" inconsistency zone. This is what I would set in a control software (if the adjustment is available) to compensate for the mechanical tolerances. So I've put "yes" answer to the poll question simply because the deadzone is there, but from my point of view my unit is perfectly calibrated (including the deadzones).

My bigger concern is the axis resolution (8 bit= 256 points) which looks like a joke in 2020. So the plan is to a) replace a controller with Arduino-based one (10 bit resolution= 1024 points) which also allows for a flexible button progamming, b) replace a roll sensor with a contactless magnetic one, c) replace a pitch sensor with a long-life Bourns linear pot which was originally planned for Alpha but was abandoned for cost saving reasons. Replacing a pot with a contactless sensor would require some additional modification to mechanics which I'm lazy to do😀.

[MarkDH 234]

I should have said, for the people ticking 'No', please make sure you check in the Windows Control Panel calibration screen that you have uninterrupted numbers through the centre (easier to see if you check the 'show raw data' box).

Thanks.

[SergeyPe 92]

I would recommend using a free utility called DXTweak2- it's very good for yoke/ joystick/ pedal testing.

[MarkDH 234]

Perhaps not many people here actually have one of these!

[Paultesla 0]

Despite numerous attempts at using the factory calibration routine with various ways of setting the zero readings by releasing suddenly, turning other way and then releasing slowly, slowly returning to zero, or manually setting zero location mine has been impossible to remove the deadband in roll axis. Pitch is not too bad but still present. It is very useable but just worries me how realistic it is to a real aircraft.