After a long sabbatical, general help please

[Vlerkies]

Hi Folks

I flew IL2 from the beginning through all the upgrades up till 1946.
Then a long lay off till I got stuck into the DCSA-10.
I did buy CLOD on release out of principle, but never spent time as I was quite comfortable in my HOG.

I have some real noob questions if you would not mind refreshing my memory a bit.

1.Watched a lot of vids on the web and have subsequently updated my CLOD and installed the Team Fusion mod, is this the right thing to do and does it impact on playability with the vanilla version of CLOD?


2.How do I get rid of all the text on the screen, text chat message, control inputs and stuff?

3.I have a Warthog hotas, I have set the joystick axis's with sensitivity all the way to the right, 1.0
and the 2 deadzone all the way to the left (maybe a very very small deadzone center.
I know this is subjective and to everyone own preference, but is this the best I can do? Even though the sensitivity seems ok the controls are a bit to linear for my liking.
I prefer softer inputs near the center, more exaggerated on the extremities of controller input. Ideas, conf?
Its just very twitchy with slight inputs, I know I am rusty, but that's not it.

4.Also if anyone can direct me to Hog Hotas control setup links I would appreciate that very much. I don't use target. Just looking for some good logical layouts that I am sure are around.

5.Controlling fov in flight, back in the day I used to flick between 3 hard coded magnifications programmed on my Saitek hotas at the time, I have seen some vids now with almost a smooth zoom view?
My brief looking through the controls brings up nothing?

I can think of a number more but won't get carried away.
I only number the questions to make it easier to reference for those kind souls that offer some of their experience.

Many thanks in advance.
V