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Repair and modification of a Agronn 737 yoke column
published novembre 1th, 2020
I accepted to take a look at a malfunctioning Agronn yoke. The problem was continuously disconnecting
from the PC.
Opening the case soon revealed a very bad soldered microcontroller board. This board, custom made
by Agronn, acts as a joystick controller and is connected to the switches on the yoke and the pitch and
roll via hall sensors. The board is tiny with populated with SMD components.
A closer look reveals that all these components were hand soldered and the components do not align
properly on the pads, some are not even flat on the board.
Further tests show that it has bad contacts. Trying to solder first did not give good results because you
cannot access all solder points easely.
By taken it apart it showed that the hall sensor for pitch was
mounted to deep and touched the part that carried the 2
magnets. The part with the magnets did’nt turned free, so this
was something I also had to trace into. This faulty part was
responsible for not being able to keep the plane level with
handflying.
Because the client did not trust this anymore I proposed to
replace the faulty board with a more conventional joystick board
like Leo Bodnar.
I have taken some picture during the repair and dismantling of
the control column. It is mostly made of solid iron and aluminium.
Take a look at the pictures and you will see clearly that not all the parts were manufactured to the same
quality level as it should be. Certainly not the controller board and also not the structure that holds the
hall sensor and toother gear for control of the pitch. Also the blue led is swimming loose in the body,
without any attachment. We fixed this as well.
After replacing and fixing most parts the tests revealed a better working yoke, which was the
purpose of these repair/modifications.
If you have any questions about
this article, please feel free to mail
