left handed pilots, wheres the hardware?

[G3]

i am truely leaning towards the "go for it", option, i have no doubt i will eventually have a fully left handed hotas that i can be proud of.

i would like to see your assignment layout, that would be wonderful.

 

so many projects going on at present i cannot justify any custom stick building in the near future but you have definately inspired me and restored my faith in my fellow left handers, giving in is all too easy and not really my style, nor is it yours i see.

 

a good question now would be:

 

what joystick/hotas setup would be the best to base my project on.

as i mentioned earlier, i am disappointed with the reliability of the attack 3,

so a quality hotas would be desirable.

ideas:

ch hotas

cougar hotas

 

i kind of like the cougars throttle as it moves in a radius, rather than a sliding motion, although i have heard some people complain of a sticky movement with the cougar, while others swear by it.

please comment on the feel and motion range of the ch if you would.

 

once i made myself a six speed usb shifter for racing sims, so i am no stranger to tinkering and modifying etc, bring it on i say.

 

thankyou again for the inspiration snomhf.

[Zuki]

Hmmm.. i'm a lefty from way back. Alway remember playing baseball as a lefty (thats wearing the glove on the right) witch means you have to catch with the RIGHT hand.....get used to it. Learned how to drive a car in a right handed world.... you still have to shift with your RIGHT...imagine what happenened when I went to Ireland on vacation...the same thing happened when I went to Oz., OMG! The shifter was on the left. When we eat, we have a fork and a knife that we have to use in conjunction with each other....some times we have to adapt, I imagine sometimes what would happen if I lost the use of my right hand, I would learn to use my left for the joystick...There's a few more things I can do with my right hand as well.... but this forum isn't the place to discuss, dum de dum..

If you really can't handle it, get a CH hotas, I don't think it would be that difficult to reverse it.

[Wannabee]

first and foremost, this is not a thread for right handed players to tell us to "just get used to it" and so on, so please resist.

Well, thats kinda what all militaries say to left handed pilots. You WILL fly right handed. Jets are set up that way. Oh, and I am left handed too.

[NEODARK]

Oh, you think because I'm a lefty with a Hilary avatar that I'm also a political lefty? Too funny!

 

I tought about it for a second, then I busted out laughing :D

[snomhf]

ggg,

Your question (or my answer, whatever) is not totally fair as I am as vested in CH as a human being can be. Think about it, if I decide tomorrow that I want to change to the Cougar, that would mean making a trip down to Fowler's Florist. Not likely.

 

Now, that being said, I REALLY like CH stuff. It's rugged, smooth, dependable. I have never moved a dead zone slider since the day I plugged the stuff in! I really love the scripting environment (Command Manager) too that comes with it.

 

The big complaint is it lacks rotary dials that the Cougar and others have but I really don't see that as a big deal personally. Also, the Throttle Quadrant addon device is great too (don't have one yet) which migrates into the setup very nicely. BTW, the TQ is ambidexetrous so I won't have to start mixing up the 2-part epoxy when it arrives.

 

Go check out CH's latest: http://www.chproducts.com

Also, go hang out at their discussion forum: http://www.ch-hangar.com/forum

 

The forum is where you REALLY find out what people think about CH stuff.

 

P.S.

If you decide to go CH, you could probably twist my arm (left one) and get me to make you some handles and mail them to you. Course you'll have to do the hard part of mounting the switches and drilling the holes.

I have the original handles so it would be easy to make templates to get the shapes correct so you get pretty much an exact (reversed) duplicate.

[Zuki]

ggg,

Now, that being said, I REALLY like CH stuff. It's rugged, smooth, dependable. I have never moved a dead zone slider since the day I plugged the stuff in! I really love the scripting environment (Command Manager) too that comes with it.

 

The big complaint is it lacks rotary dials that the Cougar and others have but I really don't see that as a big deal personally.

 

Why I don't know what your talking about .... my CH throttle has rotary dials... wink wink.

[snomhf]

I tought about it for a second, then I busted out laughing :D

Actually, I made an avatar a long time ago while flying Remote Control and I wanted to use that but couldn't find it. Just without thinking really, I used this goofy picture of Hilary mainly because it made me laugh every time I looked at it. I recently found my RC avitar and may switch it out. Haven't decided yet.

[NEODARK]

I see you are in Raleigh (I'm like 1.5 hours from there) we should play lockon sometime...

[mikoyan]

Hey I'm left handed too ,but I use the right hand, I think tha you should get use to righthanded sticks, thats the way they build airplanes. my father told me that if I wanted to be a pilot I SHOULD learn how to use my right had. Now I use both hands for everithing , but stil, I'm not a pilot yet:icon_toil

I have a quiestion: how do airbus coopilots control the airplane? with the left hand ?

[snomhf]

Hey I'm left handed too ,but I use the right hand, I think tha you should get use to righthanded sticks, thats the way they build airplanes. my father told me that if I wanted to be a pilot I SHOULD learn how to use my right had. Now I use both hands for everithing , but stil, I'm not a pilot yet:icon_toil

I have a quiestion: how do airbus coopilots control the airplane? with the left hand ?

Actually, small general aviation aircraft like the Cessna 172 that I sometimes fly, is "left handed." You sit in the left seat and hold the yoke in your left hand while you work the throttle, trim wheel, and radios with your right. Identical to my CH rig. it's the military aircraft that are "right handed", GA craft tend to be "left handed."

 

There's something to think about.

 

I've had people tell me that if I ever got to fly a real F16 I would be totally screwed up with the controls since mine are backward. I lay awake at night worrying that if the Air Force were to call and ask me to squeeze my big fat 53 year old butt in one of their F16's that I might have a problem! Man, I can't handle all this!

[Andrew_McP]

I lay awake at night worrying that if the Air Force were to call and ask me to squeeze my big fat 53 year old butt in one of their F16's that I might have a problem! Man, I can't handle all this!

 

LOL! :-) Yes, the "real pilots have to do it, so so do you" thing is pretty frustrating. In the real world lefties have a disadvantage (I'll bet there are a disproportionately high percentage of right handed pilots out there purely because flying -- especially military -- is tough enough already without adding another complexioty for the brain to deal with), and we do in the virtual world too.

 

I've spent about ten years trying to get used to flying right handed with a variety of right handed setups. But even though I can do it now, I still fly better (more precisely, more instinctively) with my left on the rare occasions I allow myself to try it. In fact I've often thought about sawing the thumb-hat off my Fighterstick and flying left handed. However throttles need a lot more messing about to convert, and it would be easy to end up with a bodged and limited setup which was no better than the uncomfortable right handed setup.

 

At the end of the day simming is a minority interest and lefties are a minority of a minority, so I think we'll always struggle. However if CH made a left handed setup I'd gladly pay twice as much as for the right handed kit. However I suspect that puts me in a minority of a minority of a minority, and that has commercial suicide written all over it. :-)

 

Andrew McP

[snomhf]

Andrew,

I am beginning to look into what it would take to make left-handed moulds of the CH handles. Since I still have the original "right-handed" handles that I took off when I made my lefty ones, I'm hoping I can figure out how to make some ceramic moulds that would allow me to mass produce them. The problem is getting the interior of the handle made to provide all the mounts for the button circuit boards and such. Moulding the outside of the handle is simple.

 

I'll keep working on this and maybe come up with something.

 

All you "just get used to it!" sissies can just turn your head the other way ok?

[Andrew_McP]

Since I still have the original "right-handed" handles that I took off when I made my lefty ones, I'm hoping I can figure out how to make some ceramic moulds that would allow me to mass produce them.

 

As you say, it's the internal stuff which makes life doubly complicated. Finding a one-off solution for yourself was a nice little project. Trying to duplicate that in a more organised way sounds like *seriously* hard work. As the Cougar-mod makers would no doubt confirm... this way lies madness. :-)

 

Andrew McP

[G3]

Andrew, for one reason or another i enjoy reading your comments.

i agree we as lefties are unfortunately a majorly minor minority, and i too would gladly fork out mega bucks for a factory built left hand hotas.

 

currently doing my best to learn right handed, but i am not happy about it.

:joystick: :thumbup:

[Force_Feedback]

Buy a Cyborg EVO, you can even shove it up your ass, so customizable is this stick (no haven't tried it :P, just to illustrate the stick's different knobs and adjustment features.)

[pho3nix]

Hey man, like you said you don’t want this to turn in to a lefty vs. righty thread, but just a bit of real world perspective, when i was doing my aptitude testing for the RAAF we did al the maths and stuff and we also did a motor skills series of tests, where we all (including L and R) had to use both hands to control a randomly moving point on the screen using the two sticks.

The catch was that one hand controlled vertical and the other hand horizontal and during the test the controls would swap so one hand would do the function of the other plus randomly swapping between reverse and normal.

 

All of us, both right and lefthanders were all tested equal due to this.

there were also a multitude of other tests, but my point is this

 

If you do something that is completely foreign for a period of time, the human brain is quite capable of adapting... even for a 53 year old brain

:thumbup:

[169th_Dredd]

LMAO at some of these posts

[Force_Feedback]

What about all those right handed captains on the next gen (A-320 and onwards, I still consider the A-320 as modern) Airbusses? They don't whine, true, they got a real aircraft to fly, not some virtual one in some dark room, with weed and porn.

[G3]

Buy a Cyborg EVO, you can even shove it up your ass, so customizable is this stick (no haven't tried it :P, just to illustrate the stick's different knobs and adjustment features.)

 

went to the game shop today,

no cyborgs stick available, apparently some guy had bought all the cyborgs for some bizarre fetish :music_whistling: .joe king.

 

sorry mate, jokes aside.

i have seen those things, haven't owned one, haven't heard much positive about them either.

i am more interested in something semi-realistic like the current suncom talon i am using, its just a pitty its not a little more precise and LH :)

[Megahurts]

I purchased a Evo wireless after my USB gold devoloped dead spots in the pitch axis. Given then choice I would have gone for the wired version but as I'm C-Cardless as the moment, it was a choice of PC World or PC World and the only choice they carry are the Evo wireless or a RH'd logitech without a hat switch. The action is a lot smoother than my old USB gold but I'm having issues with "lag" on the throttle - I'll have to move it anywhere from 30-50% of its motion to get "wake it up".

 

Having said that I've got a cunning plan to recycle the USB Gold as a HOTAS throttle by locking the Y-axis, removing the spring and fitting some sort of friction lock and remounting the stick at 90 degrees to the base using some copper pipe.

 

This *should* give me a poor mans hotas......

[G3]

good luck with the stick mods and sorry to hear about the throttle lag, wonder if theres a way to increase its "stay awake and wait" time so to speak?

 

i am still waiting on my sfs throttles, i aquired a couple from the states but they are a long time coming.

also aquired 4x talons to modify if i cannot get used to the right way :)

 

169th DREDD, hehe i am glad u are getting a giggle out of all this :D

[Megahurts]

I've messed around with the USB power saving setting but its not made much if any differnce. Thinking about it, I think its a fucntion of the wireless and the avail. bandwidth. I've raised a question in the saitek forums but have had no response as yet. Depending on their response I'll consider asking Saitek to swap it for a wired unit instead.

 

When/If I get the USB Gold modded I'll post some pics etc. I've just moved house and all my tools are buried under boxes at the bag of the shed so it might be a while....

[G3]

all good things take time, good luck with it all...