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Building a landing gear lever with a real handle, 737 style
published november 13, 2020
updated december 3, 2020
The landing gear lever mentioned below is made around a real 737 lever.
All parts were made from scratch by me including the front panel. The annunciators
were also made from scratch. Each annunciator contains 3 high power LEDs in the
correct color. A requirement for the construction was that the original handle also
had to remain original, in other words no holes may be drilled or modified in any way.
When looking at the photos you will see that a large
wheel is mounted on the handle, this weel belongs to
the landing gear and I will build everything on this wheel.
On top of this wheel I placed an acrylic wheel with cams
that are going to operate the micro switches.
At the bottom of this wheel is a lever with spring that
lets you feel the steps between the 3 positions when you
operate the lever.
Everything was mounted on a 3 mm thick PVC panel.
The electronic parts include an Arduino Mega2560
and a led extension board that will light up the
annunciators. The led extension board is also connected
to the Arduino. We need this because Arduino ports
cannot drive 3 leds from 1 port.
This lever will have to work with XPLane 11 so we chose
Air Manager as the interface. Here a script was written
containing the 3 micro switches and the 6 annunciators.
This script ensures proper operation of the lever.
If you have any questions about
this article, please feel free to mail
To drive the annunciators and the microswitches
I use an Arduino Mega2560 and the leds
are driven with a LED extension board which
is also connected to the Arduino Mega.
The scripts are now available for Air Manager or
Arduino via XPL Direct.
All details in the download
Both files in the download for 10,00 euro
Take a look at the video
