G3

i must say that was one exciting movie, i especially liked when the music stopped and the plain vanished, reappearing just as the music kicked back in.:thumbup:

hello again, massive hangover today, second week in a row involving a 14 hour:cry: drinking session, why do i do it :), my brain is jelly today but to pass the time i did my best to clean up the old pots and reassembled the suncom talon joystick, to my delight i have been able to get an acceptable level of performance out of them, i completely striped the pots out of their casings, sprayed them out with the contact cleaner again and game them a good rub with a course cloth. i also increased the pressure on the sliding pickup that contacts the resistive surface. i just bent them out by about a millimetre which seems to have done the job, time will tell if this will be a good idea or not as it may cause undesirable wear. also found that the issue i had previously with the dead zone not appearing in the centre of the axis was due to the screw at the base of the pivot, this screw sets up where the pivot point is in relation to the centre of the axis, a couple of turns on the screw and everything was just beautiful. if thats as clear as mud i am sorry, best i can describe it. had a great idea about extending the shaft up to the grip to be closer to RL cockpit design, pretty much just thinking about extending the wires to the grip from the base and adding an aluminum hollow shaft. have had a few ideas on how to rig up a completely different pot setup, as i find the original design very awkward and not service friendly. about to set up the talon in 1.02 and give it a whirl, unfortunately still waiting on the second stick and the throttle. now where are those nurofen, kids shhhhhhhhhhhh... :) edit: after flying several missions and having a general play around i have come to the conclusion that the standard talon base just does not cut it. the pots have their own build in deadzone which i dont like having no control over, far to much slop in the centre (spring return seems solid and reliable), maybe some tweaking of the curves is needed, i tried a few different ideas from standard to linear, with and without deadzone and it still seemed to have this massive nothingness in the middle before any movement is seen from the axis. i am liking my extension idea more and more, imagine the stick between your legs as in RL, i tried it tonight and the joystick base just doesnt really fit anywhere for it to be comfortable. it seems more natural to have the stick there (struggling as it is flying right handed :) ) instead of up on the desk or whatever, at the same time i would have to come up with a far more acurate axis input.

thanks all for the info, in game and RL.:thumbup: unlike you folks fluent in the lingo, i sometimes stuggle a bit with all the tech talk, but i am getting there.:doh: from some of what i am reading here it seems the eagle maybe getting worse? fingers crossed after BS ED might be kind enough to give the f-15 a bit of loving. much appreciated as always...

anxiously waiting for my copy of FC to arrive and looking forward to perhaps getting involved with some online play once i get a little more polished. i have been reading up on the various changes and am especially interested in learning where things are at in reguard to IFF (indentify friend or foe) in the f-15, my current bird of choice. from the look of it the servers are patched running 1.12a, and i have seen some very generous offers from some of the more experienced guys to help get those of us who are less familiar up to speed online. sorry if it has been all said before, i have read various threads and tried to make sense of it all, hopefully with your help in a few replies we can summerise (?) where we are at in relation to identifying other aircraft as to not annoy others by shooting friendly's etc. i understand that there was/is ? a bug with the f-15 radar where it looses contact approx 20nm out, causing some headaches. maybe some thoughts from other eagle pilots as to how to best deal with this situation if it is stil an issue. thankyou

i thought that was what you meant, having the ability to set up your own multiplayer game, where you can cycle thru missions etc, like maps in quake for example, or different tracks in racing games. and run on a reasonable pc that doesn't need a powerful graphics card. could be looking down at the map view watching the battle unfold.

trying to read thru a pdf or computer manual is no comparison to sitting on the toilet learning weapons delivery techniques while doing a little mud moving of your own. think of it as good time management........:megalol: and a hard copy gets read and not just looked over when needed, imho.

some great replies there, many things i have read about on the forums, all in a nutshell, terrific answers actually. appreciate it.

after reading the recent poll on what version of lockon people are flying, i was interested to see a fairly split and varied response. rather than mess up that thread i started this one to perhaps discuss futher the reasons people are playing that particular version of the game or using one particular patch or another. maybe share your opinions on why you have held back or why you play the latest. i would be most interested in hearing if people feel that the upgrade from 1.02 to FC is worth it for someone who is mainly an eagle pilot, or if its worth waiting for the BS.

1.02 also looking for gold, but waiting for the shark.

the lounge got boring quick as i couldn't stop thinking of the hotas pots :music_whistling: so i pulled the stick apart again, full well knowing its a b_tch to get back together, hehe. popped the pot holders out and pulled the pots out and stripped one apart. they have a tiny little wiper and that looked full of crud, maybe its conductive grease or something, anyway i found a direct replacement for them at a local electronics components store here: click on the overview tab and see the specs are just what the doctor ordered. http://www.rsaustralia.com/cgi-bin/bv/rswww/searchBrowseAction.do?D=pots&Ntt=pots&Ntk=I18NAll&N=0&Nty=1&name=SiteStandard&forwardingPage=line&R=0855377&callingPage=/jsp/search/search.jsp&BV_SessionID=@@@@1501412230.1148795003@@@@&BV_EngineID=cccgaddhlhkmfkjcefeceefdffhdhif.0&cacheID=aunetscape&Nr=avl:au the particular ones in the stick are 30mm long x 8mm wide with a 15mm travel, with a slightly less resistance which i would expect to still calibrate just fine. will be interesting to see if these are available in a digital non-contact sweeper version. something else i have decided to look into is modifying the top plate that holds down the main centering spring (under the rubber boot), at present its just part of the moulded body, if i cut this away and actually make a top plate that screws on as it looks like it does i will be able to reassemble the stick easily without having to worry about the spring tension fighting me when trying to position the lower gimble assembly back in the base. i hope thats clearer than my post-intoxicated brain is at present. anyone who has pulled one of these apart will no doubt comprehend what i am saying, reassembly in its current state is a hassle to say the least. so good news on the availability of replacement pots, for now its back to the lounge...

i hit the pots with the contact cleaner, but seemed to have little impact. what i noticed was the actual centre of the motion has its own kind of dead zone, and this wasnt actually in the middle of the movement,(on either x or y axis) causing my left roll to be instantly agressive and the right to have a pause in it, where i guess centre should be, this also seemed to delay the pull back motion on the vertical axis. everywhere i read people are saying how bad the pots are in this product so i am seriously thinking of what way to go about modding it, i have done research on options such as digital pots which require a little ic circuit to provide say 1024 positions with a non wearing out slide, or just modifying it to take some other style pots that are easliy replaced, we shall see. fitting the handles etc to a modern ch base could well be the solution in the end, for now though i have a massive hangover and am hitting the lounge, feeling a little let by it all down but thats life sometimes. guess i expected to plug it in and go flying, was not to be. strangely enough i had a modern logitech attack 3 do a similar thing to me, after only very limited use the right roll got very jittery, i seem to remember my sidewinder 3d pro gameport was by far a more reliable device, for me this stick that has yet to be beaten for its longevity. i say this but have never owned ch gear or mant others so i am not saying for a second that the old sidewinder is the best, just the best old stick i have used personally.

thanks for the led light tip, just set the stick up and calibrated it in windows, and unfortunately its performance is pretty disapointing, looks like the pots are gone, very jittery curve, maybe i can filter it out, heres hoping. modding this stick is looking more and more likely :), i like the grip very much, i found it just a little too big for my hands and was not reaching the hat comfortably, i placed a piece if rubber about 1/4" thick on top of the hand rest and it totally transformed my grip position to near on perfecto.

to my new best friend Goya:thumbup: thankyou for that info, most :helpsmilie:ful. i mentioned a program before, i think it maps joystick buttons to single or multiple keystroke commands, will investigate futher if need be. it would be nice to leave the keyboard setup intact in game but i will make the sacrifice if thats what it takes:joystick: once again thanks to all helping and for the good luck wishes, now i anxiously await the arrival of the throttle :music_whistling::) and if no one would buy a set of ch pedals off ebay for aboout a week, that would be great, hehe.

s77th-goya, thanks for the link and only single key strokes, this may well be an issue as many commands in lockon seem to be shift+R for want of a better example. i saw a small software program that may help overcome that in the post about modifying old gameport devices into usb, but unsure if its suitable in this case, apparently the other suncom set i scored has a disk, maybe it comes with some software? Goya - sorry to bug you, but do you find that the single key thing is a limitation or is there a way around it, i was thinking you could setup a button or switch on the splitt throttle as say the shift and the ctrl keys? thanks again for the advise and help, love your work:thumbup: ps: as for finding one, yes ebay usa seems like the best chance, unfortunately most folks don't like to post out of america. well not to australia anyhow. i saw a guy selling one on a hardware site so i contacted him and what do you know, he still had it, new in box, woohoo. good luck on your search, i too looked for ages, the sticks are a dime a dozen, its the throttle that seems to be as rare as hens teeth...

the first of two talons arrived today, second hand but looking in good condition. so i did whatever any self respecting tinkerer would do, pulled the thing apart straight away :) i popped open the lower back of the handle and to my horror bits and spring started falling out, but i had some time to spare so i enjoyed the challenge. after carefully removing the circuit board and associated switches from the handle i removed the gimble assembly from the base and continued to strip the stick down and clean out all the old grease from all the hat switches, pot axis joints and spareingly replaced the dried up yellow paste. careful not to break any wiring i gave it a good clean up inside and began the reassembly process, it was very difficult to re-install the gimble assembly as the spring that centres the stick has a boot or seal over it which sit hard up against the underneath of the top of the base. i overcame this by compressing the spring with some electrical wire, similar to the way that you compress a car spring in a macpherson strut when replacing the shocks. this allowed me to manipulate the boot over the top of the spring and all was well once again. it took a great deal of pressure to hold this in place while i got the screws done up holding the gimble assembly, a quick check of the boot position and locked it in place. (at this point i had written quite a bit more, only to be met by the log in screen when i hit save after editing, i will come back later and perhaps continue, how annoying) interally i found it to be a little bodgey in some ways, switches not really mounted, just sandwiched in between the two halves of the lower handle for example. i also found that the guide where the wiring for the grip enters the base was letting the wiring get caught in between itself and the base which to me seemed like it would have eventually caused a failure, i sort this out with a tiny little cable tie around the exit point of the wires into the base. it seems to have a fairly nice action thru out the axis range, i am yet to plug it in an check out the repsonse and signal quality it will deliver, that will be 2moro. now what i would like to know is any guides as to programing the buttons etc. the talon has like 4 red buttons on the left and a sliding black switch above them, can anyone give me a basic run down on what the go is there, cheers. maybe a link if theres a good talon programming site......sleep now.

that was great,rather amusing... pardon my noob-ness also, but can you be a stealth fighter? if so is it just a skin or a full model?

and don't forget: ah memories :) in its day i did enjoy commanche vs hokum, its a little simple looking these days though. also i know its boring but turn up the flight difficulty to max in fs2004 and it takes a bit of practice not to make a mess of it, especially to hover etc, and thats one skill i think is worth mastering fo the BS, sure it will handle differently but essentially it is bound to be similar.

where have i been, i had not seen this before, looks quite interesting. they must be busy over at ED. i like where they mentioned in the overview section, under hardware: "the instructor,pilot or fac can be on screen or can projected to partial dome or split to seperate screens" i like the sound of that :)

nice one Paddy, that too looks like a great option for a simple usb conversion. we are lucky to have such devices these days, thanks for that. anxiously awaiting the delivery of my talon + throttle so i can try it out, im like a kid in a candy shop, also picked up another talon ready to hack to bits if i choose to do the Lotas Mod. or should that be LOSART:music_whistling:(left on stick and right throttle):joystick::thumbup:

dam u Subs, i spent ages checking out that site:thumbup:, those little circuit boards look fantastic, just what a sim enthusiast needs. especially for upgrading an old hotas to usb, good luck with that... question? with the plasma v2....you said you were not happy with some pots sensitivity. as for the sensitivity, it says the v2 is 10-bit so how many individual positions is that? to answer my own question, i think it means 1024 positions...

thats a great story from a bottle night, smiling at the end is a good sign... and skipping the politics was a great move, nearly as bad as religion... if ever round my way there's always a drink to be had for any lockon ru members at my place especially left handers, hey snomhf:thumbup:

agreed, that anyone can become conversable, but wether or not you are interested in listening to what they have to say is the big difference :) as for the topics you mentioned, i like to talk about things i understand, neither of the above topics really meet that criteria :D, and somethings never will :thumbup: and as for only one bottle, one usually is plenty for me, but if its an extended session then reserves may be called for.:thumbup: i have a 1.75litre bottle of jack daniels, thats usually plenty for 2 of us, hehe.

thankyou to everyone so far for the input, great diagram SUBS cheers. we'll see how that bet goes hey, please keep my thread semi focused :) snomhf, unless i have missed something, i intended to give this unit a try as is, from what i read elsewhere the old gameport pedals will work but the more i think about it the more likely it is that i will need to use some usb pedals in order to get the full potential from the hotas as was previously mentioned by Joe Kurr. at present, i like racing also and i use my wheels pedals for my rudder, this will do for now. the idea of swapping over to a ch base is still an option, it was basically the fact that everyone seems very happy with their performance. if the talon and splitt throttle work ok, then i will be using the existing electronics from them. they apparently work ok with winXP or so i hope :) the diagram provided was great, along with the other advise, it would be great to get my hands on something in a pdf format or something A4 size i could print out, thanks again all who assist, past and present.:thumbup:

that would be great, i look forward to seeing that, thankyou.

looks as though i have been lucky enough to aquire a brand new set of these older hotas, they are apparently pretty much the same grip and throttle found in the f-15 eagle. (i know the grip looks the same but i have never seen a real throttle. after looking in lockon f-15 cockpit it does look very similar, good stuff) i read somewhere that they should hook up to the old gameport ch pro pedals no problems :) (edit: from advice given, i now think this is not the case if i want to use all available axis) what i am interested in finding out is what commands to put where. as in what functions are allocated to the various hats, switches, toggles, thumb and pinkie switches etc for both throttle and stick grip. is there somewhere with a reference diagram or layout from the real f-15 eagles? please help if you can, thankyou. snomhf, yes i do intend to LOTAS the new hotas :thumbup: basically, question is: what does what? (other than pedals for rudder :) )