Hi all, I’ve just purchased the new Bravo Throttle Quadrant and powered it up. I’m after some info if poss before I spend all day trying to figure it out. I believe that this quadrant can be used for single, double piston engine or duel or quad jet engine.
Does the Quadrant recognise what plane I’m using or do I have to set it up for each plane wether it’s jet or prop?
As I said I powered it up and got in a dual engine turbo prop. The left thrust lever worked fine along with fuel flow and prop rpm but the right thrust lever did nothing just did not work st all to control engine power
So do I have to set this up and would I have to set the config up for a jet as the prop rpm and fuel flow would be somthing else like flaps or speed brakes
Also somthing I noticed was after I downloaded the driver to get the lights working on the new Quadrant they still don’t work. Any ideas on that?
1st impressions it looks the nuts so I hope it works as well as it looks
Cheers
Dave
You need to make several profiles for different types of aircraft, maybe one for each that you fly.
I suggest you go to YouTube where a guy who calls himself Rmag has posted a number of short, but very organized and instructive videos, probably answering all your questions and more.
There is a bug in the assignment for throttle 2. Out of the box it doesn’t work. You need to delete the assignment and then reassign it to the same control lever for throttle 2. Seems weird, but it works. Also, as mentioned, go take a look at Rmag’s videos.
There’s tons of tutorial videos on YouTube already. I’d start there to see what needs to be done. I don’t even have it yet, and I’ve saved videos to reference later.
To save some time, just copy each profile and delete/add functions to that particular aircraft. One problem I had was I could not get the thrust reversers to work with the 2-jet setup. What I was directed to do was use the throttle marked 2 and 3 and the reverse thrusters worked. Aerosoft has a good tutorial regarding the configurations if you have not seen it yet.
Well, yes and no…
You could fly, for example the Cessna Citation Jet, using a simple GA Aircraft configuration, but you’ll likely want to add things like Air Brakes (Spoilers) and maybe positional Flaps, so creating a separate configuration for that and then saving it as something like, “Twin Jet” would be better. Then anytime you fly a Twin Jet, just call up that config. You won’t have to remap things every time.
Here is a pretty great YouTube video that will show you how to quickly set up 5 different configs and save them for future use… whether you use them or not:
Jim-Sim
[Edit: Someday in the future, it would be great if MSFS would be able to sense what levers we actually installed on the Bravo, and then load up the associated config file accordingly… but honestly, there are plenty of other things that need fixed first.]
Since setting up and using different profiles within MSFS is a pain I recommed looking for FSUIPC 7…the registered version allows creating profiles aircraft specific.
Load the FSUIPC along with MSFS and then load the aircraft you want. → FSUIPC selects a previously created profile seemlessly.
Switch aircraft and FSUIPC again loads the correct profile.
I am using a Saitek Yoke and additional quadrant for a total of 6 levers. Depending on the type of aircraft as throttle 1 2 prop 1 2 mixture 1 2 or throttle 1-4 etc etc.
Yeah, it helped a lot. I would however make one change…
In the Twin Engine Jet setup, he uses levers One and Two from the set.
If you use levers One and Three, you can twist the number on the white piece to reflect engine “2” instead of “3” and then you have the correct levers that actually face each other instead of both facing the right. I’ll see if I can find another photo to explain what I mean.
[Edit: Okay, here is a shot of the correct lever usage:
I believe “SimFanatic” has a good Youtube video about using the right throttle(s) in the two-engine jets (CJ4 and A320).
Also, you don’t have to create a profile each time you fly, you just have to select your pre-made profile in Controls for the aircraft you’re going to use. For example, the “complex single” profile would apply to the Bonanza, the DA40, X-Cub, Cessna 208 Caravan, etc.
I have different profiles for the A320 and the CJ4 since I use the thrust reversers on the A320 but the CJ4 does not have them, even though these individual profiles are largely based on the “2 engine jet” profile.
Like other specific profiles for games or hardware, make a copy, edit as you like, and then rename and save.
In fact, i received my Bravo yesterday and am trying out just using two profiles.
My main profile has lever 1 as speed brake, 2 and 3 as throttles, 4 as prop control, 5 is mixture and 6 is positioning flaps. With this config it seems that I can fly any aircraft, from the single GA all up to the 787. All I need to do is stick the right levers on, and remove and cover up what is not needed.
So for ex. for the 152 I put up just the GA throttle and mixture lever and cover up the other slots. For the 787 I put both commercial levers, speed brake and Flaps on and remove the prop and mixture. Works perfectly fine so far.
Note that for the 747 you need a different profile however, replacing prop and mix with throttle levers 3 and 4.
There are quite a few posts on this which are relevant. In very brief summary, you can configure the throttle easily using the in-sim mappings by following the videos by rmag (I link them below). Note that there are a couple of “fix” videos of his that are really well worth watching. However, before you do that, make sure you download and run the software from Honeycomb that enables the LEDs on the throttle. Link is here:
This one covers fixing the throttle 2 mapping issue (DEFINITELY start with this one):
This one shows how to set up 5 different aircraft types:
This one shows how to fix the IAS autopilot light not working:
This one shows how to fix a potential sim rate control conflict (not something I experienced):
This one is a brief tutorial on how to use the autopilot controls for the Bravo:
And finally, this one shows how to set up controls specific to the TBM 930 if that’s your plane of choice:
Once you’ve followed all these through, pretty much you are good to go. As he says in the first video, you can map whatever switches you want to the seven switches on the quadrant - and make sure you do that before copying all the mappings so you only have to do it once.
HOWEVER - the Bravo throttle suffers from the same bug that the Alpha yoke suffers from - namely the control acceleration bug where many of the controls in the cockpit are “accelerated” by a factor of 10. This means that things like the heading can only be changed by 10 degree increments, altitude by 1000 feet increments and it also makes trim 10x more sensitive.
There are a lot of threads on this issue, but you can vote here to get the bug raised up the priority list to be resolved:
There are ways around this issue - many referenced in the threads I’ve linked. Personally I’ve gone for FSUIPC which gives much greater control over the mappings and sensitivities but is not very user friendly. It is very powerful, but complex.
Some advantages:
Much better mapping control (e.g. you can map one of the switches on the Bravo to a TOGGLE X setting in the sim - normally if you do this, the switch keeps “throwing” the toggle and the switch in the cockpit will appear to vibrate as the switch is being constantly thrown. FSUIPC enables mappings that don’t do this).
Much better sensitivity controls on axes than via the sim
[this is a big one] you set up profiles and associate aircraft with profiles. When you change aircraft, FSUIPC automatically applies the pre selected profile for that plane - I like this one a lot - especially given the flexibility of the throttle with the various axes etc
As I said, the downside is that it’s not that user friendly. However, the manual is very well written and it’s not like you need to understand coding - but you do need to be a bit “tech savvy”. In many ways, the hard part is knowing which sim control to actually map. Trial and error works well here!
To get it to work properly with the Bravo (and Alpha) you need to install extra LUA scripts. These scripts allow FSUIPC to “see” all 48 buttons on the Bravo/Alpha as the normal Windows limit is 32. Installation is simple enough. Download the scripts, put them in the FSUIPC folder you created when you installed FSUIPC and then add a few lines to the INI file for FSUIPC.
See this post for where to download (you’ll need an account for the forum that is linked to be able to download, but that’s free registration):
See this post for what to put in the INI file:
Note that FSUIPC is not free - it is 30 euros. I know, more money on top of the expensive Bravo (although I think that is worth every penny). The free version of FSUIPC does not allow control mapping. You can buy it on simmarket. Note that I am in no way associated with FSUIPC.
There are other ways around the accelerated input issue - just skim through the threads I’ve linked.
The free solution to avoid the acceleration bug is using vJoy & Joystick Gremlin
Here’s a link to the post where I’ve posted my solution which works perfect
The profile I posted is for your single engine complex plane like the Caravan
For planes like the 152 and 172 I’ve created a separate Bravo profile and have cleared the assignments assigned to lever 2(the middle blue lever) as that is not used
For the TBM I’ve created a profile similar to rmags video and unassigned the 3rd lever as it’s not used
And for twin engine props I’ve just created a profile that assigns the appropriate functions across all 6 levers
yup the throttle, pitch & mixture are the easy part
once you have the switches and autopilot done I did the complex single levers and the used that as a default to build the other profiles from
