Flight Controls

This section covers the replica out-of-console flight hardware — the standalone units that sit outside the cockpit panels: the control stick and the rudder pedals. These are their own physical builds, separate from the console panels.

Throttle: panel vs. axis — two different things

The throttle panel (the quadrant with its switches and indicators) is a Left Console panel and goes through DCS-BIOS. The throttle axis (analog lever position, CTRL_THROTTLE) is one of the HID axes below. Don't conflate them.

HID axes

The replica flight controls connect to the PC over the HID path (not DCS-BIOS), because the A-4E-C exposes no axis exports through DCS-BIOS. The planned axis allocation uses 7 of the 8 DirectInput axis slots:

Axis	CTRL constant	Control
0	CTRL_ROLL	Roll — replica stick
1	CTRL_PITCH	Pitch — replica stick
2	CTRL_THROTTLE	Throttle position — replica throttle
3	CTRL_RUDDER	Rudder — rudder pedals
4	CTRL_BRAKE_L	Left toe brake — rudder pedals
5	CTRL_BRAKE_R	Right toe brake — rudder pedals
6	CTRL_ZOOM	Zoom

The speed brake is a DCS-BIOS on/off switch, not a HID axis.

See DCS-BIOS vs HID for why these go through HID.

Status

All planned — no hardware yet

Nothing here is designed yet. These will be CAD-heavy builds once started — mostly printed and machined mechanical parts. CAD tooling is currently under evaluation (Fusion 360 vs FreeCAD); see Design Decisions D8.

Interested in contributing to the HOTAS build?

The stick and pedals are a big, self-contained chunk of mechanical and firmware work. If that's your thing, start with How to Contribute.