Sanwa Black Custom

[PaulJ]

Many moons ago I was fortunate enough to win a Sanwa Black Custom in a competition run by RCM&E. It was a lovely set, "state of the art" at the time and I enjoyed flying with it! Things have moved on a lot since then but ever since getting into this retro thing, I have wanted to get hold of, and convert another Black Custom. They are few and far between these days, so when Shaun offered me this one, I grabbed it with both hands, even though, as I'm sure Shaun would agree, it had seen better days....... It has taken me a while to get all the bits together but finally it's finished!

It is a fairly small case and the stick units and separate trim pots used up a lot of the available space inside. Mike K supplied one of his magic GTA encoder boards and I used a Lemon transmitter module. The original had a timer display on the front with attendant selector knob and stop/start button. The display on the GTA is somewhat larger than the original timer, and of course, the holes for the timer controls didn't correspond to the control buttons on Mikes board. So a certain amount of butchery was needed to make the GTA board fit, and little space was left for anything else. The butchery of the front panel wasn't pretty and all I could think of was to cover it up with a piece of tinted perspex..... I think it looks "OK".

The only place I could find for the Tx module was on a separate board which mounted conveniently on two pillars which had supported the original board....... Then I realized that there was nowhere for the battery to go! I like to use a 2s 800(ish)mAh battery and , try as I might, I couldn't find one that would fit in the available space so in the end I made up a battery out of two single cell 800s which fits quite snugly.

All that is left now is to wait for the weather to improve enough to try it out!

Paul

[Mike_K]

Looking good

[Shaun]

Glad you've managed to use the tx Paul.
First conversion of that set I've seen.

Shaun