Thruster controls.

[thebs]

The CH Products Pro Throttle has a thumb stick, and it works great for controlling lateral thrust, both in combat and while landing.

Those CH products look quite promising, pretty much all complaints I've read about have been about the look of the stick and throttle. Should be very durable. Made me insterested.

CH Products make industrial controls. They then moved on to releasing consumer products using more inexpensive materials, but still solid produces. I've owned several over the years, going back to 1992.

Last year I ordered both the Pro stick and the throttle. The stick was ... "tolerable," after calibration. I had to move one of the dials over, and it gave me less variance as 80% of the range was to one side. But, again, after Windows calibration, it was usable. The throttle was useless, and could not be calibrated. I had to turn one dial all the way and even after calibration, there was just wasn't any variance to be left at all. The thumb controller was also worse in precision than my X55's.

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Unfortunately they are no longer fabricating their products in the USA, and their quality control has slipped ... badly. The box even still said "Made in USA," yet the sticker "Made in Mexico" was on the device itself. This is becoming a common theme with American companies post-NAFTA. Move manufacturing to Mexico, then design and over-time, through brain drain and the continuous need to maintain the equipment, quality suffers.

Disclaimer: Both before and interspersed during my IT-centric career (including at IT companies sometimes doing more embedded and even traditional engineering design), I am an degreed EE and have worked at several American companies producing electronics, including those with mechanical components, fabricated both domestically and outsourced. So I am biased, but also very, very exposed to many situations, 1st hand. That's not to say non-USA engineers and manufacturers are not as capable or knowledgeable. But it is to say that when you design and fabricate products for 30, 40 or even 50+ years, then replace the talent, it takes another 20-30+ years to re-gain that level of experience.

I bought via Amazon, and even told them about the false advertising on the box, being that the unit was Made in Mexico. Within 2 days after my return, Amazon had yanked that one CH Product from sale altogether, citing several customer issues, including mine. A couple of months later, Amazon started reselling them again. Apparently they got to the bottom of it, but I wasn't chancing it again. CH Products is yet another case of another American company shooting themselves in their foot via its accountants and finance majors. In one case I was involved with, it was a foreign acquisition for the American brand name, because Americans blindly buy based on brand name.

I've been happy with my Saitek X55 purchase, although I am concerned with them long-term after their acquisition by Madcatz. If I was going to buy a new HOTAS today, it might be the Saitek X56 (related thread) to improve the precision of the thumbstick ... although I'm still waiting on a 3rd party review to verify the improved capability and precision.

[JustSomeGuy]

In where I live the CH fighterstick + pro throttle would cost less than Warthog stick + throttle, but still not cheap, roughly around 300eur and the hog would cost almost 400eur.

I did read from somewhere that they are made in America, so if they actually are made in Mexico it's a bit dissapointing to hear.
That coming X56 would seem like something that would fit me well enough, but what I've been reading is that half of the Saitek/Madcatz owners are unhappy with the quality and the drivers of the products and the other half is happy. Then again pretty much any product you read of in the internet has the same result.. Saw somewhere that the price is about $250 usd, so very close to the CH set after all the expenses when it arrives to these northern shelfs.

With CH it seemed that there are more happy owners than unhappy, and no drivers is a plus too, I guess. Don't know if I should keep in mind the words "Plug and Pray" here.

Maybe the safe thing to do is to wait for some X56 reviews to pop up, and after that start wondering some more.

[thebs]

Thebs, does that hack work on a X52/Pro?

Don't know. Neither familiar with the x52 [Pro] inputs, nor have one to try.

From looking at the Registry Hack prior (pulling from memory), it just adds analog axes.

I.e., Windows only enables so many axes per controller, and any others beyond that have to be defined.

E.g., an axes could be standalone (1-dimension), like for a dial or a slider, or in combination (2-dimensions), like a stick.

So what Aussiedroid's Registry Hack does for the X55 is enable some of the dials, plus the analog thumbstick. If you tried it on the x52 [Pro], it might enabling things incorrectly, for various axes. However, there is both an install and uninstall Registry Hack included as part of the kit.

E.g., run the registry hack, pull up the controller and calibrate it, seeing what has been added, and what inputs are now available, then uninstall and edit the hack.

You can also, manually edit the registry. The driver for the x52 may already have the entries, and they're just not set. Setting them to a value that maps to a new axis (or axes in the case of the stick) would then be useful. Each time you change something, run the calibration for the throttle.

Note:You might have to reboot after each change for them to show up in the calibration. I was going nuts once, after I ran the registry hack, and it didn't change anything. Rebooting solved the problem. Unplugging the stick wasn't enough. I think the driver has to unload, so at the very least, I'd have to unplug, unload the driver (which is not easy to do with NT), and then replug. Did I mention how much I hate NT's driver model?

[Hrdina]

I'm sorry to hear that people have had problems with the more-recently built CH gear. For the record, mine is all more than 10 years old. I bought the CH pedals (and yoke) in Dec 2001, and the stick and throttle in March 2005. In all that time, I've only had one minor problem with the yoke (which CH fixed).

I sure hope this gear lasts another decade, because it seems that there are not a lot of quality alternatives available.

Before the CH gear, I had the TM FCS and WCS Mk 2. I moved to the CH gear when I wanted to upgrade from game port to USB controllers.

If anyone else is already using CH gear, and needs help, I highly recommend the forum at CH Hangar.

[TorTorden]

I bought everything last spring/summer after finding ED so I guess it's as " new " they come.

[thebs]

I bought everything last spring/summer after finding ED so I guess it's as " new " they come.

Could have been earlier stock, or, they moved some manufacturing back. Do your devices say Made in USA?

[TorTorden]

I bought everything last spring/summer after finding ED so I guess it's as " new " they come.

Could have been earlier stock, or, they moved some manufacturing back. Do your devices say Made in USA?

I'll check in the morning.

I dont really care about that as long as they work :p

[thebs]

I bought everything last spring/summer after finding ED so I guess it's as " new " they come.

Could have been earlier stock, or, they moved some manufacturing back. Do your devices say Made in USA?

I'll check in the morning.

I dont really care about that as long as they work :p

No, I meant the quality control issues don't seem to be an issue on USA made models.

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This isn't an American arrogance thing, but literally companies either moving and not retaining any talent or being bought out and similar happen (foreign investors wanted the brand name). If companies want to move their operations go Mexico or go offshore, if they do a wholesale layoff, then quality goes to garbage and they are out of the industry within a few years. Understand US business folk are very short-sightrd, and have issues you don't see in German and similar engineering firms.

I.e., I've been a party to no less than 11 such situations, usually as a consultant. The ones that had issues immediately had to hire back old staff as consultants when returns went way up, and was killing their bottom line. I've also seen finance and other departments end up wholesale firing as a result of perceived savings, when they utterly lost an entire product line as a result. One company I was with got gutted after their name was tarnished after 2 years, when they retained 0 talent (and the new, remote teams were literally incapable of assembling things proper).

I cannot speak for CH Products on that point. I was just saying I haven't heard of any Made In USA units, before the move, that had any issue. I still have 2 myself. But the 2 I attempted to buy recently were of quality I've never, ever experience with CH after nearly 25 years. It's why Amazon made them unavailable for a time, because of the return rates.

All the complaints are ones made in Mexico. Hence why I was curious if you got old stock or not.

P.S. Keep in mind I've consulted around much of the manufacturing and even some of the semiconductor industry, here in the Americas. I've seen good outsourcing, and bad outsourcing.


Disclaimer: Please excuse any grammar, pathetic typos, or satanic versus known as "auto-correct" as this was posted via Tapatalk from my budget Honor 5X

[TorTorden]

Had a quick look around and can't really see they mention assembly or country of manufacture.

So I assume its something they aren't too keen on advertising.

[KLED]

I have an X55 and have pitch and roll on the joystick, yaw on the joystick twist, lateral and vertical thrusters on the throttle thumbwheels

I tried setting up the lateral and vertical thrusters on the thumbwheels and it works pretty well, thanks! Still not too used to using them in battle yet so I've still got them bound to the little stick thing too, but for launching/landing they're good.