Waxer

Hmm, I imagine that over time the Chromium plating get rubbed off by the bearings. And then the mild steel begins to rust. As Aurelius mentions in his review of the GF2, users should set up their GF initially with some oil or grease on the bearings / cams (something like WD40 or a motorcycle cam lube spray is what I use). And thereafter you should service them occasionally. But given enough time the Chromium plating would still wear off. As you can buy cam sets separately for someone wearing out cams, at least they are user replaceable if they start to wear out. Anyways... I am waiting and looking forward to the F-14 grip w/ GF3 combo whenever that lands.

Understood. Thanks for the update Jabbers.

OMRON: They are pretty high quality, but: 1) Not all Omron switches are equal... their product line has variations in specification... some higher, some more built to a price. 2) Also think about how many times a mouse button gets clicked. 3) Smaller switches (like in a mouse) are likely more fragile than those with larger housing and more space to build a stronger switch. Thrustmaster: If one of my switches failed in my Warthog I would then do the OTTO Mil-Spec retrofit. But those switches really ARE expensive. c.£20 each unless you are bulk buying them. And it is a bit of a faff to fit them. Do-able though.

Yeah, I asked about that. I was just told that they were not giving that information yet and to wait till nearer release. What was said was that it was an electronics upgrade, but no indication of how that would benefit the user experience. Anyways... we find out hopefully soon enough.

Yes, this is what I understood from your well balanced review. It is a shame that they aired their Beta testing "dirty laundry" in the public eye with testers that thought that they were getting a completed product. It is to Winwing's credit that their mentality is "we got this detail wrong, so let's got back and fix it" rather than just push it out to market. (They still should have been honest with customers and communicated better however... but that is another story).

VKB Europe customer services answered my question about this yesterday: the first batch of F-14 grips are being sold to existing customers that already have a VKB base. Partially this is to prioritise existing customers, but also they have almost run out of Gunfighter 2 bases and they have not completed the Gunfighter 3 base yet so they are waiting to sell GF3 in combination with F-14 grips to new customers. The estimate (not promise) was that GF3 base + F14 grip would be ready to be sold in Feb 2020. (Then I imagine there would be a little Asia to EU transport delay). So if that is too long to wait, fair enough. But I already decided that I am OK to wait.

Thanks for sharing. Very interesting to get pilot's impressions.

Looking at the EU store. I don't have a Gunfighter base yet, but I would buy one... is there an option to buy the grip with a base? If so, would it be a Gunfighter 2 or Gunfighter 3, or is the version 3 still in development?

Very detailed and it seems like a very fair and well balanced review of the version of the device that was sent to you testers. I agree with your conclusions. Thank you for sharing this and posting it C6.

Apols. £129... you are correct. Me 2... I wish I had pressed "buy".

I used a price tracker. The lowest Amazon UK price was £139. Not lower. Back at a higher price now it is Black Friday. Go figure.

Yeah, you are right. You didn't mention flap control, but regardless of what you said / he said / she said, the OP makes a good point. We have stuff like engine crank which you only use at the start of a flight and then no more and other hardly used buttons on the throttle key panel. But you don't have basic flight controls referenced frequently on the key panel in flight, like flap control. Also the zoom function (which while not a flight control) is very useful for DCS.

Does this mean November, or not November because of the coupon complications?

It was as low as £139 on Amazon UK a week ago. Maybe there again, or lower, on Black Friday?

Well... following that logic you could be dead later on today. In fact, as I write this, you could be dead already! (I hope not, but you could).

Excellent post Jabbers. And thank you for providing the update. Indeed, it was my impression from the unboxing video and other reports that the HOTAS - as it stood - had taken a very different engineering approach to the competition. Some of the ideas where good, some perhaps not done before because there were side-effects / problems. I really wish Winwing every success and I hope that they are able to turn this HOTAS into a mature and high quality alternative to the incumbent suppliers. Having an additional high end option can only be positive for the community. However, I also agree with other comments regarding the exceptionally poor communication with Winwing. It would be somewhat different if this was a Beta test product before any orders had been taken. But the situation is that people were promised a completed product many months ago. And the company has been silent.

I have priced up a self build MonsterTech desk mount. Using the same extruded Aluminium profile (you can find exactly the same stuff MonsterTech use with a simple online search) and adding in the price of fittings and you will see that Torsten at MonsterTech is not price gouging at all and that his prices are quite reasonable. Consider that you need to cut the profiles to length (and most people don't have the heavy duty table saws necessary to do this accurately and safely at home, or access to such a power tool at work or university). And they have overheads for staff, packaging materials, office costs and so on. No. He produces high quality mounts and frames and charges a fair price. Good luck to him and his employees. I ended up buying direct from him and did not regret it.

Yeah, if you are on a tight budget a SATA 2.5" SSD will very significantly faster in general use over and HDD and also much faster loading DCS. Also they are arguably much more reliable. Spinning rust fails with alarming regularity. Well worth the extra $ for an SSD and with a $1000 budget within reach.

Yeah. I think you need to remap them for the WarBRD base and TM grip combo.

High end, there is this option from Poland: https://viperwing.com/f-18-flight-simulator/ They offer varying levels of detail from ACES seat only through to full systems.

Urrgh, Yeah. What are you Captain pedantic?

No. I have Slaw rudder controls. But before these arrived I used a twist grip. And before the twist grip arrived I used buttons. Were buttons ideal? No. Did they work? Yes.

There is very little between AMDs 3rd gen Ryzen and Intel's 9900K. Very little. If you intend to overclock and you have a powerful cooling solution (very good air cooler like Noctua or a custom water-cooling loop like on my system) you would most likely be able to overclock the 9900K to a small advantage (0-5%). But getting there is expensive (high spec PSU, high spec motherboard with good VRM and high specification cooling system and case ventilation). Definitely law of diminishing returns. Ryzen will also benefit from a powerful cooling system*, but for normal performance it is far easier and cheaper to cool. (*Including making sure case ventilation is working well... plentiful cool air in, hot air out immediately though the top without being recirculated around the case). However it is already overclocking itself effectively so there is not so much extra potential performance to manually squeeze from the silicon. You probably want to consider that 9900K is end of line. Meaning that a step forward from Intel probably requires new motherboards. Ryzen has been making effective use of it's AM4 socket meaning that an investment in their motherboard has been offering upgrade paths to early adopters. It also gives higher resale to people selling old Ryzen processors second hand as late adopters can buy your top CPU and get it to work without a new motherboard when you upgrade. If it were me, unless I saw a striking deal on a high specification Intel motherboard, I would go the AMD route based on the current choices in the market. (Note that I only got into Intel HEDT on the basis of CPU and motherboard both bought at 50% below RRP... so if you spot a "deal" that changes the value dynamics then you could reach different conclusions).

For the Hornet you don't need rudder controls. Sure, you will get the last few % of maneouvrability from the aircraft at low speeds if you have rudder control, but you don't need it. But for helicopters and warbirds you will need rudder to counter torque from their props. Also for the Tomcat, you will definitely want rudder to fully control that because of the complex way in which air breaks over its wings at higher AOAs and the way that aircraft derives lift and manoeuvrability. In those situations would would be able to get used to a twist grip, but I would encourage saving the extra money over time to get foot pedals. But for the Hornet - your question - you are good enough to go.

Aerogator... November. Any idea when? Pretty excited to get hold of one of these.