Cyclic Grips

We got a little wild here too but hell it's only money.

We made the standard RotorWay grips and installed them and it didn't take long to see they weren't going to be able to handle what we had in mind in the way of avionics.

This little ship is going to need to have more switches and since that stick is going to be in our hand for many hours to come we might as well think comfort to while were at it.  The answer was found with Infinity grips that had it all, so we ordered a set of them. 

Top hat switch up position	Ident for the transponder
Top hat switch left position	Com remote transfer on gps/com unit
Top hat switch right position	N/A.
Top hat switch down position	Com remote Enter for gps/com unit
Trigger switch	Com transmit
Left top thumb switch	Strobe light
Right top thumb switch	Strobe toggle....toggles forward strobes on and off
Left side thumb switch	Intercom push to talk

The switches ended up controlling these items:

We didn't put the starter switch on the cyclic because we didn't want someone accidentally hitting it and jamming our starter into the flywheel at 4,200 RPM.

We felt that that would surely tear something up costing us a bunch a money and time.  We pondered whether or not taking the starter button off the cyclic was a bright move for a bit and asked bunches of folks questions about doing it and found that Robinson and Schweitzer helis starter switches are dash mounted and that trying a restart during an engine out would Not be a smart thing to do anyway because it would waste valuable time that would be better spent on setting up for an autorotation.  It would have been nice to have the starter switch there anyway but there isn't any type of switch guard available that we could find to prevent such a mishap.

When mounting the grips to the tubes we had a rather strange thing happen

after the sticks came back from the chrome shop.  The top of the sticks were a bit larger in diameter and the bushing had to be shaved down more to allow the two halves to come completely together.  The bottom of the sticks on the other hand were smaller and fit loosely in the cyclic clevises, not a real sloppy fit but enough to feel the slop as you moved the stick.  We ended up wrapping Teflon tape around the bottom of the sticks to tighten them up in the holes.  Seems that when they do the chroming process they sandblast the metal so they get a smoother finish thereby removing metal and thus smaller is the out come of it.

Were probably going to really regret it but later on we used blade glue to literally glue the sticks to the clevis's.  After flying the ship a very short time the teflon worked its way out and that slop in the stick came back again.

One thing we would have done different

had we known about it at the time is mount the grips slightly rotated to the left. We saw this done on a few ships at the fly ins we've been to. My first I thought was, hey that guy mounted his grips crooked. Later after I got the nerve to ask I discovered they did it on purpose. If you think about it, having that grip slightly rotated allows you to have your wrist straight which is alot more comfortable, like a spilt keyboard.

This is how our grips arrived from the post office

We were pretty sure they were trashed when we saw the box but when we opened them everything was in fine condition

END