About to pull the trigger on some helo flight controls

[47driver]

Im not new to the forum; just couldnt retrieve my old password from 2 years back.

 

Im in the market for a decent set of helicopter flight controls to go with my new rig. My budget is around $2000 US, but I would prefer to spend less if possible. I'm looking primarily at the Komodosim AS 350 setup, as it has plenty of buttons and uses 12 bit boards, and Rich obviously knows what he is doing. I cant seem to find much else in this price range that seems to have the same quality, nor are there very many reviews of any of the products. This is obviously a very narrow market.

 

Collective must have a twist throttle and preferably a controller box with buttons/rockers for governer control. AS-350/Eurocopter style cyclic is preferred.

 

Before I pull the trigger,

Does anyone have any other recommendations?

Does anyone have any Komodosim products and can give me a fair review of their experience with that product so far? $2000+ is a lot to pay for something without at least hearing a few unbiased and detailed opinions. Feel free to shoot me a PM if you have the time.

 

I am not going to even consider building my own; I haven't the time nor the resources to do so.

 

Thanks

Edited June 9, 2014 by 47driver

[Griffin]

Hi,

 

I'm not home right now so can't give you a proper "mini review" of the KomodoSims ProAT Pedals I own but here are some thoughts.

 

Originally I had Saitek pedals and they seemed flimsy, sticky, plasticky and cheap in every way. I broke a part while trying to mod them but wasn't sorry one bit. It gave me an excuse to buy the Komodo pedals. Despite the high price (as much as my CH HOTAS) and almost like buying a pig in a poke, I went ahead but have not regretted.

 

Rich was very professional with me and all the communication, money transfer and shipping (well packed) went as smoothly as possible. Their products come with a two year guarantee.

 

When you look closely at the pedals, you'll see evidence of them being hand made. The quality is good though, they feel solid, well assembled and all the parts feel like quality parts. The only little problem they had was with the actual part of the pedal where your foot rests. If you look at THIS picture, you'll see that the parts with the KOMODO text are hollow tubes slipped onto a metal bar. They are glued on and the left pedal's gluing wasn't perfect, it actually moved very slightly on the metal bar. That was no biggie, I just put some super glue there and it's fine. The pedals look a bit different from the picture, more refined I would say.

 

The flying experience with them was a whole new world to me! That's a lot to say about "just" pedals. Compared to the Saitek's, they are immensely precise with the hall sensors, not sticky, they have a good feel and perfect resistance. They have no center detent and no springs to return to the center position. All this made flying the Ka-50 so much easier and precise and I would imagine that you can't get any closer to real Huey pedals. That's what you would expect from a real world helicopter pilot. He designed them to be as close to the real deal as possible.

They are also nice for any other aircraft. I don't miss toe brakes as the Saitek's implementation never felt good to me.

 

What else? Hmm... I can post some pictures when I get home. Feel free to ask me anything. These are of course only a small part of their inventory but based on these I wouldn't hesitate to buy more controls if I had money and only wanted to fly helicopters.

 

In short; I really love the pedals!

[47driver]

Thanks for your reply. The precise-ness is absolutely what I am looking for.

[KomodoSim]

Hi Guys,

 

Griffin many thanks for the great little review, it's nice to see a good honest opinion from customers.

 

To address the issue with the pedal foot rest coming loose and rotating, I now screw them in place as well to prevent them coming loose.

 

BR

 

Rich