hi all, i just want to try to connect my blade cp's tx to use with fms. i came upon this website. http://www.urbanastronomer.com/bladecp/ (building a simulator cable). have anyone got this to work?! i can't get this to work, i have even soldered the wires directly to the trainer port opening the tx, has anyone just resoldered a usb drive and the trainer port and plug it in through the usb port?

I'm very interested in this topic as well.
I bought the Preflight sim and am not satisfied with it and would like to use the cable that came with preflight to try FMS.
Has anyone been able to get this working following the website software instructions?

i used the urbanastronomer cable and verything works fine..

very interesting, did you have resistors or no? it did say that it'll work without resistors. i can't get it to buzzz...

i posted this before, but here is the link to make it work through the parallel port. the page has links to all the software needed, and it's all free. there's even partlists and schematics to follow. i've done it and it has worked perfectly for over 6 months. the only problem may be finding the blade cp model for fms, because the link i downloaded it from is no longer active (i recently emailed it to an rcu member for hosting, but never heard back from him. if you need it i can email it to you.):

[link=http://runryder.com/helicopter/t253615p1/]http://runryder.com/helicopter/t253615p1/[/link]

[edit: i just looked at your link and it looks like it's the exact same setup. maybe you have the s-vid pins wired wrong. i wired mine wrong at first (sometimes it's confusing what side you're looking at in the diagram).

also, that small transistor can be damaged fairly easily by overheating. i ended up having to use my 15W soldering iron to make mine, since i fried the transistor with my 25W iron the first time.

one more possibility: i needed to enable my parallel port in my motherboard's bois to get windows to even see the port. many new pc's also come with lpt ports disabled, since lpt devices are "obsolete". you may have to do the same in your bios. once i did that and reinstalled ppjoy, fms finally recognized my controller.]

trug, i've never read your way, however, it does seem more complicated, (for this 15yo at least). just a question, my phono plug has black coating over the wires, when i cut it, i see a red wire and a white wire, is the red wire the positive? also, my wires has this configuration in it, first off, it's a black coating, under this black coating there is a ring of copper wire strands, then there's a red/white wire coating inside the ring of copper wire strands, then within the red/white wires, there is copper wire strands too.

wait a minute, i thought it was the exact same method 'cause i scanned the page and saw ppjoy... but it is in fact not the same circuit or even the same use of ppjoy.

the method you guys are using requires you to pass a ppm signal through your soundcard and convert it with software so ppjoy can see it. being an analog device, use of the soundcard will also require adjusting its input sensitivity. that adjustment, which you guys are doing with resistors, will vary from soundcard to soundcard. so, to get it to work those resistor values will probably have to be adjusted for every different soundcard. this is why some ppl may have a hard time getting to work using the same resistor values. just me, but that seems more complicated than the way i did it.

my method passes a logic signal straight to the parallel port, so everything stays digital (on or off, 0V or 5V, no in between voltages). although the circuit requires soldering a transistor, the design of the circuit is guaranteed to work on every pc that has a working parallel port, without having to modify resistor values.

regarding the phono plug: makers of phono plugs use a wide variety of standards, but usually the red colored wire is connected to the + part of the plug (the tip), and the other colored wire (in your case white) is connected to the - part (the shaft). you could check this if you have a multimeter to be sure, but red=+ is true for 99.9% of phono plugs i've played with (that's out of the 50+ different types of phono plugs i've rewiredin my lifetime). those copper strands that wrap around the inner wires are there to shield the audio signals from outside interference ; again 99.% of the time the shielding is connected to the - part of the plug (the shaft). so electrically the outer copper strands (shielding) are the same exact thing as the white wire (technically speaking, they form a single node).

for simplicity, the wire color scheme for your phono plug is:
red = +
white = - (same as black in your schematic)
copper shielding = - (same as black in your schematic)

ahh... that might just explain my problem, i connected the outer shield of the wire to the wire itself, i might try to resolder and see what happens.
thx