I am exactly on the other end of your dilemma @jenrick. I am doing most of my flying in my man cave but considering, at least for summer, to do siming in living room to stay closer to family. Question for me is whether to move the PC to living room or if laptop will do.
But I guess I will miss all my controllers which will stay in the man cave and I will use only single stick ( MS Sidewinder 2 ) in living room.
In man cave :
I have one side stick and throttle for fixed-wings. They are still on the table, too high, so thinking about some DIY desk mounts.
I have one DIY extended center cyclic staying on the floor and DIY collective mounted on my office chair for helos.
And rudder pedals under the table.
So I am using side stick or center cyclic based on the type of flying I am doing. Cyclic is not mounted to the floor fortunately and I can move it to the side in case it is not used.
I agree that not fixed desk mounts are way to go as you can quickly reposition them from side to center and vice versa.
The screw size for the Warthog Stick base is M4-0.7. I used a 16mm length. The length has to be right, because you can only screw them into the base so far before they stop. I countersunk them into my wood base bracket and used a flat washer under the heads.
Not Pit Building in the strictest sense of the word but this is what I have come up with as a compromise between sitting at my desk in an office chair and putting a 737 nose in my garage (the wife isn’t fully onboard with the latter).
A while back my wife found a real commercial aircraft pilot’s seat on eBay - the kind with the seat cut out for the control yoke. I am able to secure my TMWH stick into the cut out - perfect position.
The rest is an old IKEA desk with (formerly) rolling drawer section. I removed the wheels to get the throttle into the right height…leaves me enough room for my iPad with checklists, Chuck’s guides, etc…and also an adult beverage (not shown).
EDIT: I forgot to specifically mention that the seat was the overall determining factor as to where I put the stick. Now if I purchase the Falcon mod…“Honey, do they have F-16 seats on eBay?”
I have my CH Fighterstick center-mounted via Foxx deskmounts . This allows right-hand use of the trackball . I also replaced the castors on my office chair with a very-inexpensive set of locking castors from Ebay . Very helpful for the rudder pedals
I do , however , feel like a bow-legged cowboy wrapping my legs around the CH base to reach the pedals . I could of course raise the joystick , but flying in VR , i find it helpful to mimic the cockpit controls position .
I’m for trying to replicate what’s in the real aircraft - so if i’m flying a Spitfire it’s a centre with a long extension (I ended up building my own replica spade grip and control column fixed to a base on the floor). If flying an F16 it should be a side stick.
Over the past two years in addition to building my Spitfire sim pit (you can find a post about it here on Mudspike) I have been getting into jets with my teammates starting with the AV8, then F18 and I recently bought the F16. I also recently changed my old TM HOTAS X for a Warthog and F18 stick.
It’s been an interesting post regarding how to set up a centre stick (F18 for example) with an angle off centre to allow more comfort for the wrist - I would tend not to want to slide it to the right even if this is the most comfortable position for an office based pilot. Does anyone know what the true offset angle is in a real F18 ? It’s a bit difficult to appreciate in sims (I use DCS). I guess the pilot position in a real aircraft is very different from an office chair. F16 pilots are very reclined, F18 & AV8 less so but more than an office chair, so recline angle probably modifies the offset angle somewhat. Trying to get this right leads me to recount a rather sour anecdote. I mounted my brand new TM F18 stick centre and since there was a little play in rotation I tried to twist the stick a bit more anti-clockwise and broke a plastic gimbal in the base (I am currently in relation with TM customer service to see if it can be replaced).
Because I switch quite often from modern jets to WWII props I made an “jet installation” which fits into my Spitfire cockpit frame. Not perfect, but I did need to set the stick off centre, to get round my beer belly !
First, I have no idea what the real twist angle is in the Hornet. I use a centermount too, and just go by what feels right to me.
Second, you broke the so called ’articulation sphere’ inside the gimbal. I know, because I did that too. The TM Warthog gimbal does not like twisting torque.
I actually managed to glue mine. I drilled a couple of holes and glued some carbon fibre rods in there, for reinforcement. I also ordered a new sphere from TM. But then I went looking for a metal gimbal stick.
Hmm…my “Corona Mount Mk I” doesn’t have the rotated angle - I didn’t want to complicate things but after a couple of weeks of use I can see that it would be handy.
Do you have the rotation in just the vertical axis (i.e. turn the circular base slightly counterclockwise) or do you have a forward “leaning” angle as well?
I wouldn’t want to rotate the base. Pitch needs to be straight, as well as roll. But rotate the handle about 20 to 30 degrees. If you rock any extension at all, this is a trivial task.
Thanks Troll, TM have just advised that I need to sent the unit back to them because I also broke the magnet holder pins in the outer socket and they will need to recalibrate the Hall sensor. because I have to wait for confinement to end before they can do anything I might try to 3D print a replacement articulation sphere and try to refit the magnet on the outer socket. Glad to hear that i’m not the only dummy who tried to twist a TM grip !
