Ch Products Pro Throttle Afterburner/WEP Detent Mod

This mod comes courtesy of Ruggbutt at the CH Hangar.
 
An "afterburner detent" provides a physically noticeable sensation at about the 80% point as you slide your throttle forward. An excellent application of this mod (which I use and love) is to have WEP come on automatically when I push my throttle beyond a certain point. Because I can actually "feel" the detent, I know just how far to push the throttle to reach maximum thrust before WEP will engage. The mod is very simple to do and really adds a nice touch to an already nice controller.
 
The detent is actually a small piece of Velcro fastened in the PT's track that will rub against the throttle frame and allow you to feel when you've reached the 80% point; a very simple concept yet very effective. You will love it!
The best way to take advantage of this mod is to program your PT using the CH Control Manager. If you are unfamiliar with this really great utility, Ken King at the CH Hangar has written an excellent tutorial called Control Manager For Dummies which is a great read even for the seasoned CM user. The reason you will want to use CM is because you can re-scale the throttle axis so that it will go from zero (full back position) to maximum when you reach the detent (80% point). Without scaling your throttle, your throttle will only be at the 80% thrust point when you reach the detent which is of course, not what you want.

Programming the Pro Throttle

The first step is to edit the "CMS Script File" from within the CH Control Manager. See the Dummies guide for how to edit the script file. At the top part of the file (before the "script" line), place these commands:
%DEFINE WEP CMS.B1
%DEFINE Throttle CMS.A1
%DEFINE PT_Throttle JS2.A3
%DEFINE Throttle_Detent 50
%DEFINE WEP_Zone 10
Now, after the "script" line, place these lines in the script:
Throttle = ((PT_Throttle - Throttle_Detent) * 255) / (255 - Throttle_Detent);
WEP = ( [PT_Throttle <= WEP_ZONE] );
Exit the script as we are through with programming the script file.
Next, go to the "CMS Controls" tab and click the first box in the "Buttons" section. This is "B1." Associate the "Press" action with the command which will enable the WEP function (Aces High uses "p" for this). The effect of this is to associate the "WEP" definition in the script (which we defined to be "CMS.B1") with whatever character we place here in the "B1" button. Similarly, we need to associate "Throttle" which is defined in "CMS.A1". Go down to the "Axes" section of the "CMS Controls" tab and click the first box there ("A1"). Click the "DX Device" pulldown and select "CM Device 2" which I'll assume is your Pro Throttle device (again, the Dummies guide is invaluable here). Then, pull-down "DX Axis" and select "Z Axis" which is the throttle axis of your Pro Throttle. That will complete the association for the scaling of your throttle as well as define the position of the throttle in which your key command (WEP) will be sent.
The programing part of this project is now complete. Be sure to Save your CM map and also Download the map to your controllers.

Making the Detent

The detent is made from a small piece of Velcro. You will only need the "hooks" half as the fuzzy "loops" half is not used at all. Determining the length of the detent is the most critical part of this mod. Since you have already set up the programming of the detent, you can use the Control Manager to make this very easy.
First, start the CH Control Manager and load the map where you set up the detent of your Pro Throttle. Next, click the icon labeled "Test/Calibrate" and select the Pro Throttle (probably called "CM Controller 2"). As you move the throttle, you should see a bar graph move from "255" when the throttle is pulled back to the idle position and will decend to "0" as you reach the 80% point. Place the throttle to the position such that it just goes to the "0" point. Work it back and forth until you're satisified that you have the throttle positioned at the point where it first reaches zero. Use a ruler to measure as precisely as possible the space between the post of the throttle and the housing where the throttle will reach full movement. You can now cut the Velcro and stick it just in front of the post and it will just begin to touch the base housing when you reach the 80% (full throttle) position. Now, when you push the throttle to the "first stop" (when you first bump into the Velcro piece) you will be at full throttle. Pushing the throttle further (over and into the Velcro) will take you into the "WEP region" and the WEP command will trigger somewhere in that region (defined by the "Throttle_Detent" value in the script file which is set to "50" as a good starting point). You can change the value of "Throttle_Detent" to cause WEP to fire off at different locations in the WEP region.
Ruggbutt has put together a nice tutorial on how to make the detent. Check it out here. Keep in mind, he does not mention using the CM to determine the length of your detent which will really help you get that dimension right.