AuthentiKit is delighted to announce the release of the Spitfire chassis (or landing gear) lever. It has been a long time coming as a very functional version was being tested way back in May 2021. This control is so much the better though for the time and refinements that have happened since. Firstly the introduction of our new hydraulic damping technology has taken the tactile experience to a new level and is of course so very appropriate considering that the whole undercarriage is powered by hydraulics. Secondly, an almost disproportionate amount of development time went into the creation of an accurate hydraulic status indicator as shown below.

A journey concludes

The first Spitfire flight control, the spade grip flight stick, was released on December 5th, 2020. In many ways this new chassis lever control is the final piece of the jigsaw as we now have a comprehensive set of the primary controls for a Spitfire pilot as shown below.

• Spade grip flight stick with working brake lever and dual cannon/machine gun button
• Throttle quadrant with bomb drop button
• Elevator trim wheel which can be calibrated for precise synchronisation with your sim
• Rudder trim wheel
• Flaps lever
• Chassis lever

This is not to say that we are at the end of the line for Spitfire controls. The Spitfire Mk1A for example has a radiator lever and the Universal Hub has been designed with an input for this. For the Spitfire MkIX, which has no such lever, this input may get used for a fuel selector or coil boost/start buttons. Also, once the Universal Hub is upgraded to version 2 then many other inputs become possible.

The plan for 2022

The plan for 2022 is to mobilise the freeware developer community by publishing a series of SDKs which will make it very simple to build a wide range of replica controls by reusing the components which have been developed so far for levers/switches etc. This should hugely increase the rate of development of AuthentiKit controls. Magnetos, radios, multi-position flaps levers, trims of all sorts and many many more controls are coming your way soon and for a wide range of aircraft.