DIY HOTAS Desk Mount: the Dad Mount

I've been getting into space flight games recently, and splashed out on a shiny new X56 throttle and stick. But it took up too much space on my desk and was a bit clunky to set up. After a bit of reading I discovered desk mounts - brackets that clamp to your desk that you can attach joysticks to - "Aha, that looks like the ticket!" A quick trip to Virpil's site later and in typical dad fashion WTFed at the price - there's no way I'm paying more than the joystick cost for a fancy clamp. There are a few DIY mounts, but steel plates and fancy 4020 extrusions are not much cheaper either.

A bit of thought later while out for a walk and I had the beginnings of a plan for the "Dad Mount"

Supplies and tools are straightforward enough:

• drill, impact driver, screwdriver, staple gun and some kind of saw
• clamps aren't essential, but will help keep things lined up while they're being screwed in
• sandpaper or an electric sander - again not essential, but it's nice to have smooth wood
• measuring things - pencil and a tape measure or ruler
• a couple of jars of screws of various lengths - you'll need some fairly long ones in some places
• a largish, flat board to sit the joystick on / screw it to
• a number of planks of wood - mine were from an old ikea bed frame. These should ideally be close to the thickness of the desk you'll mount to.
• some spare anti-slip sheet

Following the sketchy plan above, per mount I cut:

• a longish bar/support to go under the desk (roughly 60 cm or so)
• 2x 8cm grips for the top part, from the planks
• 2x 4cm spacers, also from the planks
• the platform for the joystick. Make this a little wider than the joystick's base, and roughly 8-10cm longer.
• depending on your desk, you might need to cut another 8cm spacer for the underside of the support

I used a table saw to cut these square, but a handsaw should work fine. Once they're cut, a quick sand should make them nicer and stop you getting splinters.

The first step is to screw the support (the long plank) into the bottom of the platform. It should be centred, with one end of the support lining up with the end of the platform.

Drill pilot holes first, otherwise driving the screws will be pretty difficult, and you might even split the wood or snap off a screw head.

I went for a bit of overkill and used four screws near the desk, and two at the far end. Not sure how much force I'll generate, but it could potentially be a fulcrum and I have plenty of screws in the jar.

The second step is to add "grips" to the front. These go over the desk and stop the mount from dropping. To measure, place your joystick in place on the platform and align both a spacer (4cm) and a grip (8cm) against the edge of the board, leaving a gap of about half a cm between them and the joystick. Repeat the same process on the other side.

Third, put your joystick in place and screw it down to the platform. I needed quite long screws for this and didn't have any quite the right size, so I screwed in some longer ones to make holes, then clipped the ends and rescrewed. I used the impact driver for most of the length of the screw, then screwed the last cm or so by hand with a screwdriver, so as not to crack or scratch the plastic on the joystick.

The final step is to pad the support with non-slip padding, which holds the mount firmly against the bar under my desk, and stops it coming away. Combined with the grips you added in step 3, this provides 3 good points of contact and makes the mount stable.

My desk has a metal bar under it which the support can contact - depending on your desk, you might need to screw an extra spacer block on top of the support, potentially even shim that block so that it makes firm contact with the underside of the desk.

You might also want to pad the grips. I'd initially planned to do that on mine, but it's very stable even without that.

Once they're complete, you can tweak the mounts to fit properly. I sanded down the corners on the inside of the grips, to make them easier to slide onto the desk. You can also shim in between the blocks with cardboard or rubber matting if things are too tight, or sand the spacer down or pad the grips if they're loose. Paint is also an option - I might still paint mine black so they don't stand out so much.

I'm quite happy with this setup, but you might want your sticks lower, or have some other changes. Hopefully these mounts should be easy to modify with some thought.

You could add extra grip blocks underneath the spacers at step 3 to lower the joystick a bit, though you'll need longer screws.

Potentially you could even screw a short length of 2x4 to the grips to lower the joystick even more? If anyone's interested, comment below and I can sketch out some quick plans on how you might go about it.

Let me know if anything here is unclear and I can take extra pictures or draw more plans, but hopefully this is clear enough.

And if you like this Instructable and find it useful, post pics of your setup in the comments below and/or send me some aUEC in Star Citizen: my handle there is Dr-AllCome

In the interests of completeness, here's roughly what I had in mind for the drop mount version. I probably won't build these unless my setup changes, so if you do build some, let me know so that I can update this with any tips or help with issues that you run into.

It's kind of the same idea, but with a long spacer board in the middle, and four top and bottom "grips" attached to it. Underneath the middle of that you'd put your support, then a 2x4 or equivalent as a post, and screw a couple of large beefy screws (like the ones pictured) down through all three to hold them together.

At the bottom of your 2x4, you'd have your joystick platform, a chunk of 2x4 screwed underneath, then more screws sideways through that chunk into the post. Doing it this way means that you can adjust the platform up and down easily, then maybe saw off the bottom chunk once you've got it right.

Well, my setup changed, so here are some pics of the 'Drop Dad Mount'. The upgrade only took a few hours, easily doable in an evening.

The only real change I made to the plans above was to make the lower grip one long board, mainly because I was too lazy to cut it into two grips. In theory that's a bit weaker, but since it only stops the mounts lifting, that's plenty - and these mounts are overbuilt anyway...