Hawker Siddeley Trident 3B G-AWZN

[mike1275]

Hi All,

I'm currently dragging Trident G-AWZN's FE panel back to life using all original and unmodified instruments and in some cases the original sensors.

I am currently using Microsoft FSX to provide the simulation with a combination of FSUIPC and Mobiflight Connect to drive the instruments via Arduino Mega control boards.









Cheers,

Mike

[scott]

Hi Mike, thanks for joining, that is a really special project you have put together! One day I hope to catch up!

Cheers, Scott.

[mike1275]

Yup looking forward to catching up when all this chaos has ended.

It's coming along reasonably well aside from some glitches with Mobiflight which are slowing me down at the moment. I'm having to develop the sim panel alongside the hardware coding which is another new learning curve! So far I have the entire Central Warning System coded and working in both the sim and the hardware, in addition I have the entire electrical panel coded and working for switches, dolls eyes and lamps the bus tie process was a pain in the ass with 3 engine gens, an APU, battery, DC GPU and AC GPU.

The fun part is making the needles move, one of the two Mobilfight bugs I have is with PWM which I'm using for the 2 pin gauges and a sneak for the engine tachs. For the 3 pin gauges I've got some cheapo servos which are setup to turn potentiometers, I'd prefer solid state but I haven't found any chips with the right ranges. Another weird dodge are the engine tachs which are using genuine RR Spey tach generators for signal driven directly by high torque RC car motors through PWM, again I'd like to do solid state but outside of my skillset!!

[scott]

Hi dude,

My solid state drive for RPM indicators had a bit of attention last year, but I really need to pick up again. This video linked below shows my Arduino and PNP / NPN bipolar transistor "triple half H-bridge" effort. The transistors are scheduled / sequenced by the software I wrote for the Arduino UNO I was using at this point:

https://scottbouch.com/aircraft-cockpit ... #rpm-solid

It only gets up to 30 / 40% RPM due to my software, I need to fiddle around with tit to fix it; getting logarithmic performance out of it where there's huge accuracy at low RPM with tiny step changes, and massive steps up high. Giving these motors massive step changes makes them lose synchronisation and fall over, hence the limit to 40%. Other issue was that these transistors are rated at 1A and were getting very hot!

I then tried to build a MOSFET based drive board, but blew it up having never played with MOSFETs before!

Cheers, Scott

[mike1275]

Bit more progress on the Trident after a little break, so time to tackle the pedestal!

A bit of a marathon to reinstate the chopped wiring and free up the moving parts.


The fuel cock warning lamps are revived


The fire warning switches were a bit tougher because the very thin wire that connects the lamp to the switch base had fractured which required so microsurgery to replace.


Never underestimate just how many microswitches these things have in them!




Electric hydraulic pumps and oleo,droop warnings now up and running


Tomorrow the plan is to fix the landing gear door lamps and the gear position lamps.

[mike1275]

More progress on the Trident

Gear position indicator and gear doors done


Back lights sorted



The gear position indicator came out OK considering it's one from a Tornado thats been hacked to within an inch of its life to make it fit!!

[scott]

Hi Mike, that's some fantastic progress there! great work! Are your undercarriage lamps working from MSFS or just powered up for testing?

is this pedestal from the same aircraft as your panels?

I am surprised at the sheer number of lamps! even in the throttle levers!

[mike1275]

Hi,

It's coming along a treat, they have been hooked into the sim but are just powered for test at the moment because the end game is that you'll plug the entire pedestal in with a a multiblock power connector and a single USB to the PC. It will be close but hoping I get away with two Arduino Megas in there to drive it.

I'm running FSX Steam edition with FSUIPC to do the memory hook snooping, the Trident package is one by David Maltby which I've added extra panels to and modded the existing ones. All the custom variables are extracted using an LUA file to get them into FSUIPC as offsets. To do the hardware integration I'm using Mobiflight Connect it's got some quirks but I can work it which is the key bit!

It's Trident but we're not sure which jet it came out of which is the shame so bit of a hybrid but still surprised it came up for sale.

The amount of power just for lighting it up is pretty epic.

Cheers,

Mike

[mike1275]

Minor update today, after a heavy weekend of wiring all the toggle switches and micro switches in the pedestal are wired up and the cables tagged out ready for connection to the interface boards.

The next major task is freeing up the levers, cranks and selector rods, progress so far:
- Throttle levers and reverser levers freed up and working
- Parking Brake freed up and now latching and unlatching correctly
- Rudder, Tail and Aileron trims wheels all working
- Droop lever freed up and now latching and unlatching correctly
- Droop interlock un-seized and electrically working
- Landing gear lever freed up
- Landing gear interlock mechanism un-seized but too stiff for the solenoid to actuate so a strip down is in progress

So I'm getting there!

[scott]

Great work Mike! That is fantastic to have taken something stuck solid and turn it into something totally operational again!

Looking forward to seeing progress updates!

Cheers, Scott