Thadiun Okona

Monstertech, hands down. That thing is really stiff, so 100% of your motion is crisply translated into inputs and makes it easier to be very precise. Those wheelstands wobble/flex as much as they look like they would, which is enough to be annoying imo. On the Monstertech mount you can slide the stick to the center position if you want to fly center stick. They'll also make you a custom plate as well if you wind up with an extension that increases the arc etc, Olsen runs a tight ship and there products are developed with a lot of community interaction and feedback so wind up pretty refined. Real cockpits are rock solid like this and imo that provides a great deal of immersion in itself. I have a real pet peeve for even the slightest wobble of a stand a peripheral is mounted to, so to me there is no comparison here.

Warthog is very sturdy, sounds like that guy had a lemon. The sticktion is real, however with an extension you will not notice it for a long time, however eventually you want to open it up, clean out the old grease and cat hair and re-grease it with good grease, preferably something with serious damping properties like Nyogel 767a. https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=80787 Preventing dust from getting inside the gimbals will go a long way towards staving off the onset of sticktion though. https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=172588 When using an extension, you need to be very careful when tightening the shaft to the gimbals. If you put too much torque on it, there is a part called the 'articulation sphere' that will snap, and TM are weenies about replacing it however you can also just print a new one, because this has come up. http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/4126577/all/My_Broken_TM_Warthog_Stick_Gim Besides the articulation sphere, it's really hard to break one, though guys with force sensing setups sometimes snap the tailpiece, but that is under far greater loads than it ever sees on the stock gimbals.

Yes

The wiggle happens when the screw inside the grip holding the tailstock comes loose. If yours does, tighten it back up right away and maybe use Loctite on the threads. So long as it stays tight it won't wallow the metal, but if you leave it loose it may lose the ability to tighten back up. If you ever break it (zinc is very weak), Deboloestis has a Shapeways page where you can print a black steel replacement and even add the 13deg fed pitch angle Thrustmaster omitted from their already nose-heavy grip likely for balance purposes. http://www.shapeways.com/shops/debolestis This will not put 'extra stress' on the grip or whatever you are worried about; it's just a superior replacement part for the cheap pot-metal one TM makes. They use zinc to save money, not to act as a mechanical fuse.

I came up with a simple solution to keep dust out of the gimbals, a plastic disc with a slit in it, with a big enough ID to let the stick move through its range of motion without hindering it, installs/uninstalls in seconds, and leaves the stick free to remove the grip without taking it off. I sell them machine cut in black mylar, however my first ones cut with scissors worked alright. I just made a thread about them here, and have a site set up now as well. http://www.dualsticks.com/dustshields/

$350 seems perfectly reasonable, that's a high part count and a lot of welds. Ungainly looking, but that thing probably feels more like a real stick than most others do. Also note pitch is longer by 50mm or so, further adding to the realistic feel of the kinematics. I've seen pics of this thing around for a long time, I thinks it's great they are actually selling them and wish them the best of luck. As usual, Sokol1 has his ear to the ground in all the right places... thanks for the link, bookmarked and exploring :) edit: google translated link: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hotas.su%2F

A while back I came up with a simple mod to significantly reduce the amount of dust/grime that finds its way into Warthog base enclosures. While there are a number of underlying causes that lead to sticktion, a big one is the ingestion of dust and cookie crumbs which accelerates fouling of the grease. Regardless of what grease you swear by (Nyogel 767a!!), preventing dust and Cheeto crumbs from mixing with it over time is key to stretching out the cycle. The discs I make a machine cut out of black .012" Mylar plastic and are near invisible once installed which only takes seconds. The OD is the same as the black raised open area it's covering, and the ID is just big enough to allow it to travel though its normal +/-20deg range of motion unobstructed and remains flat, but not big enough to allow debris to get in. Been selling these direct and wholesale for a while and people seem quite pleased with theirs, but finally set up a site for them with a direct paypal link so felt like I could present them places like this forum. http://www.dualsticks.com/dustshields/ (wholesale inquiries welcome) Opening at top of gimbals allow debris/dust to enter If anyone wants to try to make their own, OD is 2.15" and ID is .900"

T16k and Suncom do not suffer the axis bleeding Warthog does, both being pretty decent gimbals from a kinematic standpoint despite having a single spring. In Warthog's case it's not only the single spring, it presses against a piston which limits it's contact force point to a single location on the circumference, which robs the spring tension from everywhere else unlike the 2 above examples. Makes the stick happy to draw circles, but unable to draw a straight line to save its own life, especially if it crosses the detente. I prefer discretely sprung axes (cams are my favorite) as well and gimbals I'm designing/making utilize them, but proper implementation of a single spring such as Suncom actually works pretty well and does not deserve a bad rap because of Warthog's questionable engineering.

Here's mine, made from a Cougar stem, a Gardena hose fitting, a copper fitting, and some scrap aluminum. I used breadboard jumpers to bridge the Cougar plug to the Warthog mini-DIN. Between the rear offset and fed pitch, the stick is pretty well mass balanced now. Length -15cm Rear offset -50mm Fwd pitch angle - 7deg

Be aware they used the same color wires for different outputs in the throttle unit if you decide to put a Hall in it (gnd and vcc are swapped) Throttle pot wiring: Orange is VCC Red is Vout Brown is Gnd Unlike hooking up a pot backwards where it just reverses its output, switching gnd and vcc will fry a Hall.

Not worth using the Logitech board for this, it does a poor job with the signals and the output in terms of resolution and response. The amount of work you need to do before you have anything worthwhile is the same regardless of what stick you hack, but MSFFII appears to be the only one that does justice with what games natively provide. Before Roland van Roy figured out how to hack MSFFII he used a Logitech brain and it was very unsatisfactory (laggy, signals didn't make sense vs scenarios, extremely poor output resolution). He replaced it with a full homegrown solution which he used for a long time and was pretty happy with, but that was superseded by his MSFFII hack. It was done for performance and convenience reasons. His homegrown solution worked ok, but is limited in that it req its own parameter extractor program to be made for literally every application you use it for and then only as detailed as the library of effects which you can custom trigger, which is the appeal of using something that already does the hard part for you -interface with game and generate decent output commands.

Thanks, definitely going to make my own topic just wasn't ready just yet but with all the relevant grumbling about the Warty lately I had to at least say something :p Also, less drastic solutions are pretty effective for at least the scourge of sticktion, main topic of op, however the ergonomics/kinematics of the stock gimbals are-what-they-are and a different subject. Sticktion itself however is pretty easy to make go away if you use the right grease, and so long as you use the wrong grease you are just kicking the can down the road, but you also really have to stop letting dust/cat hair/lint enter the top of the gimbals, either make a boot or a plastic shield like I make, but don't leave that thing open or the hourglass runs out of sand in a hurry. http://imgur.com/a/9u123 Best: Nyogel 767a Acceptable: Molykote EL30 (thicker Molykote formulas likely better) Both synthetics good for plastic with excellent lubricating properties, however the Nyogel is a high tech damping grease that has no equal, it's not merely thick, this stuff is super stiff without offering the slightest additional resistance to break it from a standstill (I've experimented with a great many greases in friction mechanisms I make). Most thick greases actually induce ratcheting and have very poor 'breakout' properties, especially after a little evaporation and dust ingestion... Damping grease demonstration: Molykote is not in that test, but when I compare manufacturer specs on relevant viscosity values, the Nyogel is ~600% thicker, and that viscosity really smooths out the impact when crossing the detente in addition to really smoothing the feel of the gimbals. Nyogel 767a Viscosity Index 194 27840 cP (absolute viscosity) 40c Viscosity 32000 cSt (kinematic viscosity) SG = .87 Molykote EM-30L Vistocity Index 56 5096 cP (absolute viscosity) 40c Viscosity 5600 cSt (kinematic viscosity) SG = .91

'Easiest' way is using the brain from a known good FF stick such as MSFFII to generate the drive signals to run your own hardware. Other FF sticks don't do a good job at generating quality signals so are not worth hacking. Beyond that, making your own digital interface to extract necessary parameters and then be able to convert them to analog and then into drive signals to run through the amplifiers is exponentially more complicated, and well into the zone of diminishing returns since you will need to craft dedicated interfacing solutions for every single title you want to use it with. I've dabbled in this realm, and some of my stuff is on Roland van Roy's site linked by Sokol1, namely a circuit used to convert airspeed data>DAC into speed dependent centering forces. Your best bet is getting an old SMFFII and following Roland's formula above for beefing up its drive output to run bigger motors hooked up to your own hardware. Then you have near plug-n-play FF compatible with tons of titles, with all sorts of effects already there (landing bumps, stall shakes, trim loading, etc) without having to reinvent rather complicated wheels.

Sorry for the long post... at some point I'm going to make my own topic of it, but I'm in the process of designing alternate gimbals for the Warthog to replace the 'trailer hitch', which will retain the MX sensor and TARGET functionality, but on precision machined mechanisms. My goal is to design gimbals that are compact enough to fit in an enclosure the same form factor as the stock one, so those with proper installations can use it as a drop-in replacement without modification to mounts. Am making 2 different types, starting with opposing rocker arm construction (like CH Products or older VKB), as well as cam centering. My gimbals have provisions for spring centering on both sides of the assembly, allowing double the permissible max loads on the tiny mechanisms. Here's some shots of my prototype rocker arm version, however the newer iteration is just slightly smaller to meet my req. As the Rocker arm examples above have dual mechanisms, so will the cam versions. Anyone that's ever mounted a Warthog grip on VKB gimbals or used an extension on one will understand how soft it is, even with the stiffest spring and there is a limit on how strong that spring can be, hence double mechanisms. Obviously Warthog's stock gimbals annoy me as well, however so long as the sticktion isn't present they are passable for most situations. Keep in mind, not all greases are created equal, and many people swear by are not very good. I have settled on Nyogel 767a for this, an extremely thick damping grease that goes a long way towards taming the nastiness of that center detent as well as killing the ratcheting. However, no matter what grease you use, it's important not to let dust/cheeto crumbs/cat hair/etc find there way into the base, and the open topped enclosure has quite the apatite if ignored. I make/sell a super simple mod for stock Warthogs to keep dust out of the base enclosure. I'll be making my own topic for those shortly, but here's an album with pics/explanation http://imgur.com/a/9u123 Dimensions for the disc are there if anyone wants to cut out their own to try or use, or I sell my black mylar ones for $4 inc shipping in US and $5 international

It's pretty common that the tailstock/tailpiece that the locking collar rides on gets a little loose. The remedy is to open the grip halves (carefully so the trigger spring doesn't launch out) and tighten up the screws holding the tailpiece inside the grip. Wouldn't hurt to use a little Loctite on the threads, as it's annoying when it periodically does this.

That thing has great damping.

VKB's adapter would only work if this F-18 stick uses the same tailstock as the Warthog. It's not a threaded adapter that makes the Warthog's M-36x2 threads mate to the VKB base. To use it you have to you have to open up the grip and replace the tailstock/locking collar/minDIN connector with the VKB part that will then mate to the base, but the only way that part would work it would have to mount/fit the same way as the TM part.

Debolestis has a Shapeways page with the part you need. Not exactly cheap for a printed stainless tailstock from them, but then again neither would a replacement from TM these days, plus it's flat out nicer and much cheaper than the cast bronze ones the Ribbstick folks offer. He also has them with the fwd pitch to correct the ergonomics where they should be, TM made the stick too vertical to reduce its already nose-heavy condition, but on a FSSB gimbals that's a non-issue. http://www.shapeways.com/shops/debolestis edit: of course Sokol already posted this :p

Mine are all 2.5mm hex, not Torx.

Taking apart the grip is straight forward, and all the switches have wire harnesses with plugs on them to connect them to the board. If you get a new switch from TM, it's really easy to replace but that might not be so cheap. Try not to let the springs from the trigger go flying, you should be able to leave it in place for this operation.