coolts

Having gone through almost every generation of joystick from an early Binatone, grandstand ‘astro wars’, (with ½” stick!), to Atari VCS 2600, (with CX40) MSX, (with competition pro), Amiga with (with competition pro ‘transparent’), Quick shot 1, 2 & 5 (Multiple. These had terrible bubble micro switches which easily punctured, leading to playground mini-industries repairing them with sellotape), Sega Master system, Megadrive, PS1, Nintendo Wii, leading to a Saitek cyborg & cyborg evo for my PC’s. So, several joysticks then. Not an expert, more of a veteran. Over the past few years I have toyed with flight Sims, (PC), from F/A-18 interceptor (yay!), on the Amiga to DCS Black shark on the PC, and have finally decided, (after the debacle of Empire Total War & selling my dust gathering Wii), that flight Sims are where it’s at as far my game playing goes, (exiting & technical. Both boxes ticked). I therefore trawled around for a ‘proper stick’, (for about 6 months), having decided that my floppy and annoying Cyborg Evo just didn’t have enough buttons. And the throttle was pants. In short I wanted a HOTAS but I didn’t want to shell out £300 otherwise I would invoke the wrath of wench™,( and in any case, I might throw a massive strop in a few months if SOW still isn’t out & Napoleon TW comes out and go back to strat games). I found a 2nd hand Thrustmaster Cougar going cheap, (about £80 with P&P), and took the plunge. It had seen better days and was in need of some TLC, (creaky stick movement, oxidised connectors – probably been in a garage, broken S2 pickle micro switch, faulty H4 hat in RT position, broken speedbrake, creaky throttle, not to mention the unfathomable software. After 3 days of chin scratching deciding whether to send it back or keep it as a “doo-er upper”, I began trawling forums and found a wealth of knowledge and advice out there, apart from the massive gravity well caused by the apparent disappearance of FRUGALSWORLD several months earlier where most of the best info for the cougar & falcon were held, or so I hear. Ho-Hum, I always miss the party. After stumbling across Cougarworld, and their priceless parts lists & articles, I decided to keep the kit, (after all it was really cheap and I am a bit of a DIY-er). So, Game on. Dismantled handle & de-soldered faulty micro switch and declared it dead. took it to Maplins and got the closest one they had, which, encased in the corpse of the old switch + blue tack, and after grafting the old micro switch tip onto the new one, the S2 pickle button now works. SORTED. Re-greased gimbals in stick & thoroughly checked all potentiometers, (common Cougar casualty, although mine were fine luckily). No more creaks and stick now silky smooth. Oxidisation polished off connectors. Dismantled throttle and re-greased axle, bearings + detents. Added a strip of shiny electrical tape to axle to tighten up torque slider as I don’t like a floppy throttle. It’s now silky smooth and firm (ooer). I plan to remove the detents or at least one of them as they are a bit annoying and a definite girlfriend-disturber. I emailed Thrustmaster support with a shopping list of parts I want to replace to freshen up the stick, (micro switches, a hat & a couple of spare pots), and they got back to me within a week and the parts are 1 euro each ( + 5 euros delivery). ONE BLOODY EURO. THAT’S AMAZING. I am going to totally refurb the stick for a few quid. I might actually get round to some flying at some point but I am having too much fun in a Fred Dibnah / James May sort of a way ATM. After a short time flying this thing I can honestly say that along with my trackIR & repurposed G25 pedals, (sod bloody driving games), the HOTAS makes the sim for me. No more faffing about with the keyboard. Just a button map on screen 2 and away I go. So….. · Come back Frugalsworld, you were gone before I ever saw you! (like nirvana) · Please bring out FF5.3 that bloody works in modern OS + Nvidia cards · Bollox to BS trimmer implementation (s) · Bring on A-10 & BOB, oh and FC2

Finally, after 3 odd months of fannying around, giving up, going back to BS & F4, trying again, almost throwing the DVD's out the window, trying a multiboot xp system (which i HAD to do for FF5.3 BTW).... a guide that works for Win7x64. Cheers to you Joe Kurr!!!!! Have a pint on me! (now, how the hell do you fly this thing again?). ps. Forgot how BAD the lomac menu "music" was. What were ED thinking?

Dont forget the engine de-ice switch, (top panel coupled with dust protector). That, and, gaining altitude early did it for me.

Works fine. No need to fiddle with multi cores anymore. It just Works.

Already learned one nugget that i missed in the PDF; If i have a TP selected in the PVI and i press 'o' to slave the SHKVAL to the HMS, it jumps to where the TP is on the ground instead of where my head is pointing, because its selected on the PVI! deselect it and bingo! p.s. Listen to me sounding like i know what i am on about

Had mine for ages now from TFC. Was pre-ordered from Amazon for ages. Jumped ship when their stock status didnt change even after manuals release.

Check their profiles against background you should eawsily be able to distinguish between tanks, artilliery, BMP, Ural,etc.

Wingman AI isnt very good at standoff engagements. Set an ingress point 5-7k distance from the target and command the wingman to attack the targets from there. Will try this over the weekend.

Forget Amazon ATM, (for UK anyway). everyone here who actually has the manual, got it direct from the publishers, (TFC).

Has anyone bought one of 'snomhf's custom CH stick and throttle for left handers' that Crunch and I found reference to? Cheers Jack, but its a little late to try and learn the other way round, (RH), as I’ve been playing games left handed since before the Atari VCS days.

http://www.ch-hangar.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3313 a Wind up? Starting to feel ike a leper at a beauty contest.

Guys I was originally using a Saitek Cyborg 3d and lately, (last 2-3 yrs), a Saitek Evo Force as they have been the ONLY left handed friendly flight sticks. I can’t believe that this is still the situation in 2009. The Evo has loads of issues with BS, (crappy FFB, imprecise trimming, floppy movement with spring disabled as you have to do, large inconsistent deadzones, driver that won’t remember settings), and it's getting right on my t*ts:joystick:. Having recently upgraded to a Track IR I find that my joystick is letting the side down. Short of cutting my arms off and stitching them on the other way round, do I have any options?

Best £20 I've spent in a long time. Pity about the cryllic labels in the screenshots but it's not a deal breaker. No more alt tabbing!

Arrived from tfc just now. Immaculate. Hard card covers. Well printed and bound. Loads of extras. Well done ed and tfc! Immense and detailed Like the old Falcon days. Now to get rid of girlfriend for a few days.

press exit (top right 'x'), then next. sorry if ive got the wrong end of the stick here. think you are trying to comtinue to next mission frm the debriefing screen.

When you say, "I’ve killed maybe everything needed (100% mission success)" you mean that you have pressed '@' and its says '100%'? Then you land, exit and after debriefing you 'cant' continue? Do you meant that you seem to have the same mission next time? There are a lot of “hasty attack/hasty defence” missions which are very similar in these campaigns. Not as varied as the 1st campaign, (no custom audio, etc).

Don’t fly the waypoints just because the Nav points to that way. Always asses the threats yourself, (as you have been doing). Not having the FPS conventional ‘quick launch / quick load’ mid mission saves on hand really makes you think before diving in. A good thing IMO. Many times, I have detoured to get to a PVI target point to avoid none mission critical targets / threats.

To be honest, for a Manual that weighs in at around .8kg (according to Wags post), £5 delivery is reasonable. Bought Lomac:FC Manual from TFC previously and they are very reliable.

I agree. As long as they have updated the 'obstinate rueful balding donkey/old man with arthritis stumbling over wet traffic cones' delivery method. But hey, let’s forgive them a little tardy delivery, down with the evil capitalistic Amazon and their (free) delivery! Please Mr TFC, can you fix it for me to receive a copy of the BS manual before xmas so I don’t have to continually hatefully ALT-TAB to the PDF every time I want to know what tiny switch does what, and how to turn off the ‘eternally spinning on the spot’ device that my KA-50 seems to have been installed with instead of a ‘pointy where I want to go’ machine Regards [pilot #2], slowly angrily rotating somewhere over western Georgia whilst the enemy look embarrassingly away p.s. love BS

Doh! I’ve had it on order with Amazon for 2 months but they are still listing it as "We'll notify you via e-mail when we have an estimated delivery date". It’s been like that since day one. Now I hear TFC are selling them. Do they have stock? I have Amazon prime but would forego the £5 delivery if I knew that I would have some interesting reading over the weekend. Decisions. Decisions.

ARE YOU PLAYING IN CAPITALS?

It’s best to activate the “reality trim” before answering the other half’s innocent queries. Going straight from 100% BS immersion to random spouse conversation can be tricky. I find a momentary blank look, (press pause first), then a smile usually works, (even of your brain is still raging about...the....damn....SPINNING!). My other half cam in the other day to ask if I wanted a cup of tea as part of my joystick button, (only the collective brake), flew across the room. I completed GoldenEye, Mario and Zelda without this much frustration, so, what is it about a gently rotating heli that gets me so mad? Because Mario doesn’t bloody well spin on the spot when you don’t want him to.

The trick is to know which pilot aids you have active at any given time to prevent getting on the “fighting the controls” problem. The other day I was trying to line up for a landing and fighting the controls when I noticed the “enr nav” light on the overhead. DOH! Now I have a scan routine before manoeuvring, (not necessarily in this order); · Is nav active? · Is hover active? · Is alt-hold active? · Am I trimmed properly? Once you get used to scanning the instruments quickly, it becomes second nature and you don’t even notice it. You then start to become much less dependent on them.

You need to re-trim after coming to a hover BEFORE engaging auto-hover. That way, the autopilot won’t be fighting your previous trim settings. It’s annoying I know. I have stopped using auto hover most of the time now because of the whole 'spinning around like a merry-go-round' problem.

Quick point. I had the same hassle. My trackIr software wouldn’t update no matter what, so, go to the naturalpoiont website and download the latest game deffs manually. Install and restart trackIr. Make sure DCS: Black Shark appears in your game list. It should start first time. Oh, and make sure to remap the 'recenter and enable' trackIr function keys if you ever plan to use the wingman menu in DCS as it uses F9 and F12