I've got a Cougar with the
FSSB R2 mod, a hall sensor in the throttle, and Simped F-16 pedals.
This is an expensive solution.
However, it has been completely reliable for about 6 years and perhaps 2000 hours or more, whilst offering performance far superior to anything else I've encountered. This is all the more impressive given that it's travelled a lot between home and various university accommodation blocks/shared houses during that time, as I completed my undergraduate degree and moved on to the PhD which I'm now about to finish.
I'm going to have to repaint it at some point; I've flown it for so long that the paint has completely worn away from some areas...
When I got it, I was running XP; now I'm typing this on Win764, so I can vouch for its ability to operate in the 64 bit world.
I expect to get at least another decade out of this control system, though the force transducer in the stick is actually so robust that it will probably outlast me; the limiting factor will probably be the eventual demise of USB or something along those lines.
Over that sort of time period, it's a very cheap solution (especially per flying hour); before I went down the modded cougar path I used to get through a set of X-45 pots every 6 months or so (say 300 flying hours if I'm being very generous), and that gets expensive fast, especially if you charge for the playtime lost whilst you're waiting to replace/repair the dead stick.
06-23-2011, 01:58 PM
Threaded Mode