So, since my wife went to see the Sound of Music (Musical) I was having the whole night for myself ! AHHHHH
Figured, since the SW cockpit was in the nicest and coziest work place (my living room) still I should do some work on it.
While playing, my son reported loss of left-right control a couple of days ago. I already heared a small thud, and indeed the small gear had come loose from the potmeter shaft. Fiddled around, and although the fixing screws are apparantly and most likely imperial sized, I found a 2 mm. hex key to work excellent. Gear is nice and tight again.
Little parts of the rubber bumpers that limit left-right have been falling off during gameplay. The sad thing is that David from RAM controls very kindly sent me some of those for absolutely free some time ago, but I can't find them anywhere. No worries, they're not lost, I know I stored them in a safe place, they will surface soon enough.
Anyway, I was still having one technical issue with the lady: she spoke to me only through the left loudspeakers (or was it right...can't remember). I removed the 4 pin connector from the AR-2 board and measured for resistance on each pair. Sure enough the good side had about 4 ohms (two 8 ohms speakers in parallel) and the other was open line.
I was kinda glad with that as it meant it probably was just a loose wire and no defects on the sound board or AR-2.
So I decided to open up the area under the seat for the first time to see what's wrong:
Was glas the Mrs. was out so she didn't see that
Vacuuming and cleaning cleaned it up almost completely. Also soon enough I found the cause of the missing right channel sound:
Strange how these have come loose. Both of them. Anyway, removed the pin and fixed the wires on a brand new pin and.....succes.....well almost.....
Now I didn't have sound on the left top speaker (the one behind your ears). I knew that one worked before...
Found out that the 2nd connector (it's the right-most connector on the first picture), that runs to the two back-side speakers had really poor contact. It looked like it had been laying in some soda or something. Need to replace the connector, for the time by-passed the connector by twisting and isolating the wires and yes, for the first time I could enjoy the game in true fake-stereo sound. Gotta love the effect !!! Jed Margolin wrote on his site that the effect didn't work out very well on the upright because the speakers are too close, but it sure works great on the cockpit !
After playing some games (and reaching nr. 2 position in the chart on SW), I checked out the insides of the cab. I must say that the HVT is running very hot. Not only that, but I also noticed some tiny sound. Like tiny sparks going on inside the HVT ! I switched off the cab and let her cool off. Switched on and no "sparks sound". After a while, when the HVT was heating up, the sound came back. I turned off all the lights to see if I could see any sparks but no such thing......
This is a bit worrying. However, I will be cooling the HVT and deflection boards with mains powered fans anyway. I did this on my friend Luc's upright and it has been running trouble free ever since....
So from now on it's cosmetics !