Things are settling down at home after 12 months of extremely challenging family times. Hurrah!
So having had a lot of time to think about getting everything as sensibly configured and comfortable as possible, I re-evaluated the control boxes for the HOTAS. Whilst I was very happy with these from a design perspective, I've always considered these too wide to be practical and look somewhat awkward sat on the side pods. Time to consider slimming things down. In order to make the throttle fit in, it needed to be de-warthog'ed. The fascia panels were the primary issue so I thought about making another cover. I considered that it would be too complicated to undertake so I decided to figure out how they were attached. It turns out they're simply stuck down. After carefully peeling them off, I covered them with vinyl and trimmed to shape and painted around the acrylic edges with matt black paint. After a minor fiasco involving kicking half a pot of paint on the floor followed by 20 mins of cleaning up, I ended up with this:
Lower panel removed and covered with vinyl:
Panels re-attached to the throttle:
This may be helpful for anyone who simply wants to make their throttle more generic.
I'll be making some custom labels for it at some point.
Edit: I also got one of these:
... and a new rig to power it all ...