and also, since msfs 2024 release is imminent, it’s more than unsure if XPForce gets upgraded for it. The developer reportedly has gone silent for quite some time. I have a pending request via online contact form but it remains to be seen if that one will get answered…
Hi,
I have used the Honeycomb Alpha and Bravo, together with the MFG Crosswind pedals for several years on a daily basis. Could not be happier with this hardware.
I am finishing up work on a yoke I have been developing for about the last year now. It started as a personal project for a new home cockpit I was building, but I quickly realized it might be desirable to other simmers like myself. I’ll attach a quick short I made the other day for it, but I will have a longer more in depth video coming in the next week or so.
It’s 12 bit resolution, hall sensors, THK linear bearings, Thomson linear rails, 180mm pitch travel (90 in, 90 out), 180 degree roll travel (90 left, 90 right), has fast and easy adjustable bungee tension, and most of all… interchangeable handles. Currently I have a classic 172 and Cirrus side stick designed and done, but I have about 6 more styles already in the works.
I’m just a dude in my basement designing and building these by hand, so I’m not quite sure exactly what the production flow will look like until I get going, but more details will be determined in that video coming up that I mentioned.
Also, just realized you posted this in 2023… so you’ve probably found a yoke by now lol. Disregard if so 
https://youtube.com/shorts/rRuT1hAwTEI?si=1kl0mWIQceWZ9Qeb
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Great job. I had been doing this for quadrants until a few years ago. Best way is by word of mouth and take no deposits until you’re ready to ship. You want to reserve the right to say no to any customer as well as not give guaranteed delivery dates, given the fickle nature of custom built sim hardware. Ebay is a bad idea due to the customer does no wrong policy and the excessive fees. You wont get rich, but you wont have headaches either. I also did it in order to have a life outside my basement. If I did not accept deposits, I had total freedom to take my time until I was satisfied with the quality of my product. I am now redesigning a multi function quadrant for an airline pilot. Same deal. No guarantees until I am happy with the end product. My biggest challenge was the electrical contacts for removable upper levers. I got rid of my cnc machine, so a printer is not too accurate with small parts.
Yeah, I spent a good little while developing the handle swap method so that it was quick, easy, and effective. Finally got it there. Not gonna lie, since having this idea over a year ago, I was a little bummed when I saw the Virpil kickstarter announcement when I was literally within a month or so of announcing mine HOWEVER, mine is done, tested, and almost ready to go. Doesn’t look like Virpil will begin shipping products until next year sometime.
Yeah in terms of where I’ll sell them, that’ll only be on my website (www.skytation.store). I know it’ll drastically limit visibility and discovery since it won’t be out there on Etsy, eBay, etc, but like you said the fees and all that baggage that comes along with those sites isn’t worth it to me. Plus, always having a limited stock (basically however much I can produce each week will be my stock) means most of my stuff would always being showing as low or out of stock on those sites, and that’s not great either.
You’re correct when you say it’ll mainly be word of mouth. I know people will have a hard time wanting to take a chance on something (and someone) brand new, with no past history to look at or anything like that, but I’m fully confident in this thing that once some reviews do get out there and word of mouth starts to spread it’ll really help with the visibility problem.
My in depth video I’ll be making here in the next several days will hopefully answer a lot of the unknowns and questions people may have. I will go over everything in that video from head to toe, give all the specs and details I possibly can, and hopefully convince people to give it a chance. Only thing I’m worried about is a month or two later seeing Virpil or some other company introduce some features that appear strikingly similar to what was in my video…
It’s funny that you should mention virpil. For me, it was the arrival of Honeycomb that forced me to eventually retire my business.. There’s a fine line between mass produced units and what I could do in a basement with current equipment. As a very experienced manufacturing engineer, I knew that in order to compete with Honeycomb, I would have to invest in a lot more expensive equipment as well as a warehouse. This, of course, was just before msfs2020 arrived, which created big incentives for large companies to get back into the game. Notice how Microsoft eliminated Lockeed overnight. I agree that Virpil is the company-competitor to watch: they are ■■■■ good builders and I respect them a lot. They’ve earned the right to succeed, given the years they’ve spent building their reputation. Then again, expanding too quickly in the sim world is dangerous. Like yourself, there are too many young entrepreneurs around the world who can get into the sim hardware business. Because of the failure of Honeycomb, many simmers are desperate for hardware that is fairly priced. My quadrants were intentionally not high fidelity so that I could keep them in the 200-400 range, thus not competing with the high fidelity quadrants. Customers knew this, and were happy to save money while getting the “essentials”.
If and when you go into production, I have money in hand! Love your concept and the ability to swap from a yoke to a stick… gold!
2 Likes
Man, this is great to be able to communicate with someone who has experience with this, thank you for that! Yes, pretty much everything you have said is almost exactly the same type of stuff that has gone through my mind the last year or so. Being in the home cockpit space I became quite familiar with a lot of the hardware available, and more importantly the gripes and issues people hated most about each of them.
I knew when I set off on this journey of developing my idea into something I could produce and sell that it would always be a low volume, low production, guy in his basement handmaking units type of thing. I know that will not make some people happy given that (assuming there’s people on a waitlist ahead of them) it won’t be a simple click and it shows up at your door two days later (thanks a lot Amazon hahaha). But I figure if people understand they’re getting a handmade, quality product that will be fully tested and quality controlled before it is sent out to them, maybe they will be ok having to wait a bit longer for it.
That being said, part of the reason it has taken me almost a year to design this thing for production has been making sure I do it in a very efficient means for production. None of my 3D prints require any type of post finishing or anything like that (aside from a few support removals). A lot of the pieces and parts I’ve sourced will come to me ready to go. The pieces for the extrusion frame will come to me already at length, and I could’ve even had the ends of them pre-tapped for screws, but that would’ve cost an extra $8 per unit, and when I can tap those holes myself in about 5 mins, that was a no brainer. But yeah, I’ve spent a LOT of time trying to make sure that production time will be at the lowest possible when it comes time to produce these, while also still making sure I won’t fully burn myself out and destroy any free time/home life in the process. I’m sure it’ll take some time to find the right balance, but as long as I’m upfront and honest with people about how this venture will operate and what to expect, I think that’ll help mitigate a lot of that.
Right on brother! Yeah keep an eye out on my youtube channel for that video coming hopefully by this weekend which will provide A LOT more info on everything.
if it makes you feel better, I spent over 7 years producing my quadrants, and each unit always had some “new features” based on experience and customer feed back. In fact, the current quadrant is a totally new design, and I’ve spent a good 6 months putting together the first prototype. The customer wants honeycomb removable levers and a reverse (removable) levers using pots and three detents. Here’s a pic of my ongoing, still rough, new quadrant. This is a 4 throttle set up for a b747. It’s not for sale and I am not taking any orders. Eventually, I may make it open source.
I like your idea of using linear bearings. I am not sure about bungee chords. One thing to think about your design is the over all dimensions for optimizing shipping and packing costs. I made sure that my quadrant could fit into a 12x12x12 box because USPS had very favorable pricing, both for domestic and international shipping. In the past few years, shipping costs both in the supply chain and in my shipping represented almost 30% of my cost. It doesn’t matter whether the customer pays or you do; it’s still a figure that raises the total cost. The electronics wiring and soldering turn out to be the most time consuming part. I used an open source software and a pcb that I designed myself for up to 18 buttons and 7 axis.
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Very nice looking! So now you’re just basically doing custom work? That’s probably a nice change of pace for sure.
Yeah, I’ve had shipping in my head from the beginning, however I didn’t want to design it fully around that. I made sure the features and function I NEEDED it to have were there first, and then I tried to keep the form factor around all of that as small as I could.
Yep, I know the crowd is pretty well split 50/50 on bungees. Early on I tried springs, bungees, and even my own idea using electromagnets (which fail miserably), and in the end I landed on bungees since they were affordable, reliable, and easily replaceable if need be. The biggest gripe I saw that people had with them was the tension was either too strong or too loose, which ultimately wasn’t the bungees fault, it was the design of the manufacturer that determined their position and length. So that quickly became a “had to have” in my book, adjustable tension. I know it’s nothing new to bungee yokes, but every single one I’ve seen that has adjustable bungee tension either required tools, removing outer casings, or a combination of both. So that meant I had to come up with not only an adjustable solution, but an EASILY adjustable solution, and that was that.
I’ve told several people who have tested the yoke for me throughout the process that I can honestly say that no joke probably 95% of the questions/feedback I will get on this thing I can promise I either thought of and incorporated it, or I’ll have a reason and explanation as to why I didn’t. I totally get your 7 year comment, and when I say I’ve spent a year on this I totally get that doesn’t mean it is done and it stops there, it just means it took me that long to get it to this production version I’m finally ready to go with. I fully expect there will be small tweaks here and there as more people use it and offer opinions. I don’t anticipate any major changes or overhauls to the design or function, but yeah just like you say this stuff sometimes seems like a never ending project. It’s almost like my home cockpit build all over again!
That’s a great design. Shame you got rid of your CNC machine. I purchased a used Snapmaker machine 7 years ago to build my collective. 3D printer, CNC, and laser all in one machine. I’ve since upgraded to bigger machines (A250, A350. both used and less than $500). After posting some pics I received several requests. So I built several for folks. I never agreed to make any for anyone but PM’ed them, starting from the top of the list, when I had a unit for sale. No hassle. I got tired of making them and open source licensed the design. Put the STLs and F360 drawings on Thingiverse and made a YT page with the build vids. It was hard giving up control of my design, but has been pretty cool seeing others build my design. After 5 years of not making them I still get a few followers per month with requests to build them. I’m soon to retire, so I may take up building for others again at that time. If your curious, Helicopter Collective with inter-changeable heads by Thick8 - Thingiverse
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Little update: it died on me two weeks ago. Pitch motor “burned” down.
To be honest I am not TOO sad about it since now that I got the brunner mkII I realised how weak an offer the SIMIONIC actually was. Especially with no word from the company about compatibility with 2024…
I can confirm that Simionic has no intention of supporting their yoke any time soon. I mentioned to them that XPforce was no longer supported over a year ago. They said they had considered doing their own. I emailed them a few days ago to check on progress now 2024 is released. This is their response.
“Sorry that’s something I wasn’t expecting. For now there is no
solution. We have not started to build our own FFB supporting software
yet. Didn’t they say there will be native FFB support in FS2024?”
I have 2 of their yokes that are now paper weights. very angry.
They were at the sim expo 2024 in June when MS announced the new sim and still took no action to ensure their product was compatible.
How didnt he see that coming? 
I am sorry, but i can only emphasize how much better my Brunner cls-e is …
Good luck to him… Might not be the best decision, business wise.
Bit thanks for the info!
XPForce is no longer being supported? According to their website it works with FS2024 so someone has updated it recently.
Just gone through the process of buying a new XPforce licence. My old xpforce licence had expired. After updating to the latest version I can confirm it works with FS2024. Its a little funky, but I will have to work through some settings to see if I can improve the feeling. Thanks for the heads up Starthesecond1598.
Hi.
I got a cheapo second hand Logitech Saitek yoke with Quadrant set off eBay.
The quadrant was OK.
I know exactly why there are so many on ebay. There is a dead spot in the centre of the Pitch and Roll.
I knew how to cure it. I installed a Leo Bodnar A/D converter card.
The game recognises the Bodnar card. Pitch and Roll are calibrated on the Bodnar outputs. The Saitek outputs must be ‘No Action’.
Smooth as silk. A continuous digital increment from limit to limit.
I am VR, so appearances don’t matter.
There are YT vids on doing the installation.
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Forget Boeing 747.
Design for the A380.
