Mark has had a few late nights recently perfecting a joystick interface for a Futaba radio transmitter. This is the link to the full story published in the Leek Times.

But, just to give you a flavour for the project, we received a call asking whether we could help Bob fly his radio controlled plane.

That sounded straight forward enough but then we got to the interesting bit; Bob, rather casually mentioned that he had only one arm and you normally require two hands to control the Futaba transmitter.

So it came down to whether Mark could figure out how to make the flight controls on the Futaba accessible through some adaptive / assistive technology engineering.

Quite soon he’d worked out how to connect a Saitek Cyborg joystick to the Futaba transmitter to control thrust, wing, tail and the rudder.

On a beautiful later summers evening we had the first ground test flight on St Edward’s Junior High School field in Leek.

After Bob’s mastered the controls of his Tiger Trainer he wants to move up to the Spitfire he’s already built.

Mike