Twitchy TCA Thrustmaster Sidestick Rudder? Here’s the fix!
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What's going on you wonderful AvGeeks!? Michael with nocturnal simulations and today we are going to take a look at a common problem you may be having with the Thrustmaster TCA Joystick that may be driving you nutty!
Have you recently been taxiing and take a quick look down to prepare your plane for take off and when you look up you're halfway off the taxi way for no darn reason other than your plane called for a union break? Do you also happen to have the Thrustmaster TCA Airbus joystick? Well it turns out that your plane isn't allowed to take its 15 minute union break just yet but your rudder axis may be trying to do so!
The great thing about the TCA joystick is that it's X and Y axis' are on a hall effect sensor which essentially is a magnet over a computer chip that can sense it's movement. The bad thing is that the rudder axis is still a classic potentiometer. Why is that a bad thing? Well, eventually dust and crud will work it's way in there over time and make it dirty OR the internal wire's will get in the way after hours upon hours of use and start causing the issues you just saw.
What we are going to do is open up the joystick body and readjust those wires like your chiropractor fixes your back. While we are in there we are going to clean out the potentiometer just as an extra precaution.
1) A small philips head screw driver
2) Electronic spray or 99% rubbing alcohol
3) Cotton cue tips
Now take that trusty stead of a screw driver and remove the 5 screws holding [insert picture of screws and do the pointer graphic to call them out] the handle together. The bottom two may give you a bit of resistance so put your big boy pants on and get them out. I wouldn't recommend bragging about this online…Next you need to locate potentiometer and maybe take some pictures to remember how everything went together. Don't worry it all goes back together pretty easy. What you may see is that the wires may be pushing against the potentiometer. But we'll get back to that in a minute.
Go ahead and rip off the rest of the plastic because first we are going to pull the potentiometer out of its housing and either use the electronics spray or use cotton swab with rubbing alcohol to clean it off. While This step probably isn't necessary it could help and better to do it now than wait until you have to rip it all apart again like a piece of IKEA furniture you put together backwards.
Now after the parts have dried, this should only take a few seconds, you can start reassembling everything. Put the potentiometer back in, then the circuit board that was at the top of the joystick, and finally if it fell out put the axis lock back in place. After you take a breather from that exhausting exercise go ahead and start tucking the wires for the poteniometer back into the handle in a manner that prevents it from pushing against the potentiometer or causing any sort of interference. Once you've done that carefully put the handle back on making sure not to pinch any wires and reinsert the 5 screws you took out initially. Check that everything clicks and moves as expected, plug her back in and make sure everything works again.
You should now see a smoother response on the axis! You may now pat yourself on the back and brag to your fellow nerds about how you've become an electronics genius by simply watching this 5 minute video! If that doesn't work you may try once again the steps I just covered and hopefully you get it the second time. If you have any questions please let me know! Happy Flying