What Keys should I map to the Joysticks and controls?

[SEE]

I tend to set my X52 to enable the commands that are essential for combat and management of flight. The Fuel cock, Engine Start, Mirrors, Net Stats, Map, etc, I access from the keyboard or mouse as these tend to be one off or rarely used.

Trim, Flaps, weapons, Radiator, prop pitch, mixture, gun-sight adjustments, etc are all mapped to the stick. The view controls depend on whether you have Head-tracking or not and controls such as Padlock depend your difficulty settings.

The Mode switch when used with the SST software (or similar Joystick UTILITY) can be rotated to three positions and each position gives you the ability to map every switch and button to do something entirely different. Assigning a shift function to any key (such as the 'pinkie') is also done using the SST software and this, along with the mode switch, gives you up to six possible alternatives for every button - that's a lot of buttons.........