Socket Replacement

Not going to lie this part was bit trickier.

First i needed to unscrew the bases of each device. Some of the crews holes are hidden under the rubber pads.

They are easily peeled off and with some finesse even with the glue.

On pads that weren't sticky anymore during reassembly, paper glue proved ideal.

Each socket is soldered on small circuit board that is held on place by duo of screws.

When examining the wire connection i found that some wires were so lazily soldered it seemed like miracle device even worked.

Wires weren't even lead through holes.

I have to wonder if that was attempt to make them seem more modern as a "SMD" tech instead of THT ?

:-)

They were more glued then soldered

I used my trusty copper desoldering wick braid to dismount the socket from PCB.

This step was not necessary.

But it proved useful when figuring out how wiring was intended to be.

Did i mention, now would be a good time to take picture of wiring or making some notes.

You might notice there is one more wire leading to stick board.

It seems to have 2 ground connections

GND and GND0

If compared, it looks like the

stick board (upper) does have connection to socket frame to GND0 on the right.

However throttle (bottom one) does not connect the socket frame anywhere.

We just have to replicate this with our new socket and connector.

Now this will be the hard part.

What is needed now is to connect correct pairs of wires on each device.

For example:

Looking at the Stick board i see that our first socket leg hole (numbered 5) leads to UCC / Yellow wire.

And this very same leg hole (marked also 5) connection leads to UCC / Pale Green wire on throttle board.

And like mentioned above Stick board does use ground wire and connects it to GND0

On throttle board it is not connected to anything.

On cable it is the one connected to the frame remember ?

Depending on the type of socket one would chose for this project, there are various ways to do this.

You could save yourself some headache and use round connector.

Not only you would have working locking pin (unlike me)

But you could just use some wires and connect new sockets to the old circuit boards. While gluing old circuit boards somewhere inside the device. There is more then enough space to do so.

Attachment of the socket could be done vie couple of screws or bolts on the body of your hotas. Along with slight enlargement of the original hole. Using either pliers or small files.

Or you could be like me. And chose the most complicated way possible X-B

Not only will you have a joy of making your own circuit board. But you will also have to make fairly nice square hole and somehow cut out pieces of plastic that was used to mount original socket and circuit board.

Now that round socketeers are most likely already done and flying,

we have some more work to do.

You can see that it was quite simple to give each connection one hole on the top.

Given some effort you could replicate original wire order, but if you connect correct wires to correct holes it does not really matter.

I measured how wide the PCB has to be in order to be able to use original screw holes. And i sawed the PCB to length.

However this was possible only in one of the devices. In the other i had to use some glue.

I bought one of those universal PCBs and tried how it might fit.

Mounting the socket inside is not ideal.

I had to cut/wiggle/file out larger part of the original mount.

It is not easy because of the bad access and all the electronics around.

Just be patient you will get there.

Cover/bottom side also needed some slight changes.

Once satisfied with my new socket opening. I glued it in.

Or used original screw holes in one device.

Soldered the wires almost properly. XD

I know this might be easier said then done.

However it is possible wire colors could differ from piece to piece.

What you can do is to grab a multi-meter and try with continuity test if your wire connections respond to proper holes in each device in correct order.

All finished.

This project was done few years ago.

And X52 still works just fine today no disconnects.

I hope this small walk through did help somebody.

If so then great.Feel free to leave a message or question.

And if you feel especially thankful, please consider small donation to refill my coffee mug.

Socket Replacement

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