There are a few DIY stands out there and the one I picked is here.

I wrote this post up originally over on the Something Awful Forums as a guide for others who might be thinking of doing the same.

Overall this was a pretty easy project, and I don’t do a ton of DIY stuff.  I did make some modifications and have further ones in mind, which I’ll go into below.  My biggest gripe has always been trying to figure out how to hold the joystick.  When I was in college (years ago) I had a great setup on my desk at the time (with my great Sidewinder Force Feedback 2, which I still have) but I’ve been unable to find an arrangement that worked for me.  Then this spring I started looking around at sim cockpit pics on the internet and decided I could build one of these pretty easily.  The main reason I picked this one was that it’s pretty easy to move around and I can use an existing office chair instead of doing a full up cockpit (which I might do later on anyway).

For reference all the photos are here in full size.

The plans themselves are very detailed and step by step.  They come with videos but I didn’t even watch them as the PDF was good enough for me.  If you can’t figure out how a certain part of the stand goes together the videos will probably help a lot.

I bought all the supplies at Lowes, along with a few tools I did not have, for around $150.  Any Lowes or Home Depot style store will have everything you need, and if you don’t have the setup at home for cutting boards, they can cut the boards to length for you.  For the PVC pipe I bought 3x 10′ lengths (as recommended) and had plenty left over (about 5′ I think).  This will come into play later.  Here’s a picture of the supplies as I dumped them on my garage floor:

For glue, the PDF recommends Liquid Nails.  Lowes had about 10 different varieties of Liquid Nails and none of them said they worked on PVC or vinyl.  However I saw another brand that specificially mentioned PVC (for bathroom inserts) and it worked out fine.  Unless you’re doing this outside make sure you get glue that doesn’t need venting (it will say on the packaging that it’s safe to use indoors)

First I cut all the PVC pipes to length.  Getting a PVC pipe cutter helps immensely, unless you already have a miter saw or something similar.  I also found it helpful to keep them sorted so I could find the right lengths easily when doing the dry assembly.

After that I did the dry assembly.  There’s 4 or 5 subcomponents that you put together first then assemble the whole thing.  And this is what it looks like when you’re done:

This is where you can start to look at customization.  I’m sorta tall (6′) so I figured the joystick stand would not be long enough (and the PDF mentions this too).  The way it’s designed, you can replace the two long pipes in the stand to make the joystick sit at whatever height you want.  They recommend not gluing these parts down.  The default ones are 10″ and I ended up going up to 17″.  This was actually easier for me to figure out once you have the joystick attached.  You can also vary the width of the whole setup by adjusting a few of the cross members at the bottom.  This is so that it can fit your particular chair or whatever.

The next day I worked on the boards.  This part was pretty easy too, only a few holes to drill and some work with wood screws.

As I mentioned I have both a Logitech G940 and a Saitek X52 Pro, however the Saitek is in storage right now so you just get to see the G940 setup.  Honestly before I bought the boards I should have gotten my G940 out and checked the sizes of the bases (I had it in its box too so I didn’t bother first).  The bases of the throttle and joystick are both bigger than the 6×8″ boards the PDF tells you to cut.  This is only a problem if you want to mount the bases with screws, otherwise you can just velcro the bottoms and this is what I’ve done.

Here you can see the throttle size compared to the board:

And here is the joystick compared to its board.  The length is ok, it’s just wider.

The Logitech pedals fit fine although if you’re short they might be too far off.  The Saitek pedals have a notch in the center which should let you scoot them up closer if the notch is wide enough.  I actually went ahead and mounted my pedals with screws.

At this point I started messing with the joystick stand length.  I had cut the original 10″ pipes and 2 12″ and 2 15″ pipes trying to get a good fit.  At this point I didn’t have enough pipe left to cut longer lengths so I went and bought 2 couplers and attached 2 5″ lengths to the 12″ pipes for a total of 17″.  This brings the joystick up pretty high which is good for me due to how my chair’s armrests are.  This is probably the most user-dependent part of the whole setup and you’ll definitely want to test it out and make sure it feels good for your arrangement.

I’ve attached the joystick and throttle with 2×4″ velcro pads.  This keeps them in one place but lets you scoot them around on the boards for best placement.  In my case I needed to move the throttle to the side a bit as you can see in the photo below.  I might go back and add another board coming back from the current board alongside my left armrest, which will raise up the throttle a little and allow me to bring it back, but for now this is fine.

Here’s the setup under my desk.  Originally I was going to scoot the whole thing under my existing setup (which is to the left out of the photo), but it turns out the length between the sides of my desk is too small for the stand by 1/2 an inch or so so I cannibalized one of my monitors and an older PC I had and went ahead and setup a dedicated flight sim station.

No pics of me using it because my fiance is out of town but it works pretty well.  The instructions have you hooking velcro straps to the side of the stand to keep your chair from rolling away but I haven’t found that necessary yet.  Overall I’m very satisfied and look forward to getting back in the swing of things… I think I’ll probably replay Freespace 2 first