Kawboy

Not an expert on HOTAS in general, but here's what I know about the X52. The X52 PRO is a decent stick. It has many improvements over the X52. The X52 with the blue painted base is pretty much not worth buying, but according to the manufacturer, the new version has a black base and many of the issues were corrected. I have not had hands on on it or the 16000m, so I can't speak to it. I have the X52 pro, and I'm very happy with it, both for DCS and Elite Dangerous.. lots of programmable buttons and you can do macros easily. It's not "realistic", but that's not a concern for me.

Using the Saitek software you can program the rotary switch as a band, then assign key strokes to each band. As an example, i used one of the rotaries as boat switch forward, center and aft. You have to be careful, as the software will keep sending the key stroke as long as the rotary is "in" the band. here's how I set up the control for the boat switch. |---------------| |--------------------| |-------------------------| |----------------------------||-----------------| no cmd----Boat aft---no cmd---Boat Center---no cmd---Boat center--no cmd------Boat FWD--no cmd ----------SHIFT LEFT-------------SHIFT DOWN-------------SHIFT DOWN-------------SHIFT RIGHT this way the rotary "passes through" the command, but all the way forward, all back and centered stop sending the command. When I roll the rotary to back it triggers B. AFT, back to center is B. CENTER, and all the way forward hits B. FWD, but again, at rest it isn't sending any commands at all

Perhaps upgrade the modems on the download servers to 56k?