AFS4 and Honeycomb Bravo Throttle Quad

[emfrat]

At long last I have the Bravo throttle quad, AUD399 including delivery by Toll Transport. It was due tomorrow but turned up yesty and luckily I was home when it arrived.

It is well packaged and comes with two sets of levers, one labelled General Aviation, the other 'Commercial'. A nice touch is that there are dust seals for each of the six lever slots, so if you only want to fly fixed prop piston engine, you can close off the unused slots. At the left there is a lever for the landing gear with indicator lights, and a proper trim wheel. and at the right a 'GA Flaps' switch providing incremental movement.
In between there is an Autopilot switch panel, six* rocker switches and an Annunciator panel.What I could see there was repeated in the cockpit view.
Assembly is just fixing the baseplate to your table, either by clamps or a suction arrangement. The main unit goes onto a post, and is then slid back, like a bayonet fitting, and there are two threaded posts which work like the adjustable feet on a fridge and pull the whole thing together.
I was a bit baffled here by the instruction to tighten these screws until "they are embedded in the baseplate" but then I realised there was something lost in the translation and what they meant to say was 'firmly seated on'.

Honeycomb point you to their website to download driver software but say that not every sim needs them. AFS4 is one of those. Every lever, switch and button I wanted to use was recognised by the AFS4 setup menu and you can chose from several configs - Twin Prop, Twin Jet and Four Engine Jet - and use them as is or modify them to suit yourself. I set up for the Baron 58 because I like juggling throttle, prop pitch, and mixture to get a trim. You can also pull the throttles back below a detent, which will give reverse thrust , which records that as a button rather than an axis. It looks like you can do the same trick with the prop pitch levers, which is more realistic, so I'll probly do that.
The 'Commercial' lever set provides an airbrake, four throttles and a flap setting lever. Haven't played with that yet.

All in all a nice piece of kit and I'm happy with it. Top marks to IPACS for organising their menus to accommodate the Honeycomb gear.
ATB
* There are actually 7

[Charl]

Wow - PICTURES!

[deaneb]

Yes its a good bit of kit. Had mine over a year now and its great. I use it with MSFS and have several profiles for piston and turbine, single, twin and 4 throttle.

[emfrat]

Wow - PICTURES!

Coming soon, Charl. My little digicam got stuck in a setting I don't use. It helpfully told me to cancel that by pressing and holding the Auto button, but I don't have one
It got to 39C this arv, so that might have caused it, or more likely it was confused by a fat fingers error on my part.

ATB

[emfrat]

Yes its a good bit of kit. Had mine over a year now and its great. I use it with MSFS and have several profiles for piston and turbine, single, twin and 4 throttle.

Cheers Deane - I'm not up to that page yet. The AFS4 setup was great, but I wish there was something like the old FSUIPC available.

ATB
Mike

[emfrat]

Wow - PICTURES!

As promised

[Charl]

Cool!
I do like the way that yoke migrated to your desktop.
Mike how much keyboard/mousing do you do, additional to the physical flying controls?

[emfrat]

Cool! I do like the way that yoke migrated to your desktop.
Granpa Superpowers, of course

Mike how much keyboard/mousing do you do, additional to the physical flying controls?

Charl -
As little as poss - I like to have everything under my hand, so to speak. My old FSX CH setup was great, the quad had so many three-position switches I ran out of tasks for them.
In AFS I have keys assigned for the lights, rather than poke around with the mouse to find the cockpit switches.
With the Honeycomb Quad I can work the A/P from there and it changes the cockpit display.
That knob at the left is a selector. If I move it to ALT, I can then use the knob at the right to decrease/increase the altitude setting, which is brilliant, and a lot less fiddly than using a mouse to move the altimeter bug. I know I can sit in the cockpit and see the A/P there change. Haven't tested yet for VS, CRS, HDG, NAV etc but I am quite sure it will work the same.

ATB

[emfrat]

This is the Quad setup with the 'Commercial' levers, for a 4-engine jet or turboprop. Slot one is now for the speed brake and slot six has flaps movement in a range from 0° to 40° down, marked as 1°, 2°, 5°, 10°, 15° etc.
The Flaps up/down switch is hidden in the pic by throttles 3 & 4. For the Concorde it is used for the droop snoot function.
You can see how the levers are stepped so that they nest together. Throttle lever 1 has a TOGA button on the left.. So, if you just want to set up for a twin, remove levers 2 and 4 and bring throttle 1 across to slot three, to nest with throttle 3. This means you now have throttles marked 1 and 3, but the knob of the throttle 3 lever can be rotated 180° to change the number to 2. Clever stuff
The reverse thrust levers move first to a detent position which lets you move the main levers back, to draw off power. When the main levers reach their flight detent position, the small levers click over their first detent and you can then pull the main levers through their detent.