Hardware & Technical CH Combat Stick USB?

[Luceferous]

In ED, the throttle and fighter stick are a great pairing, but be prepared to return units until you get a good one. I had to send back my pedals and stick to Scan before getting acceptable ones. I'd have returned my throttle too but I just ended up cracking it open to repair it myself. They are at the same time as brilliant as everyone says they are, and also shoddy, naff, fuggly, pieces of crap with the aesthetics of burnt Tupperware. Seriously, the throttle looks like a modded sandwich box. Look inside any of the units and you'll see engineering from the Stone Age, but put together with less care and attention. The clue is on the bottom of the units: 'Assembled in Mexico'. Bit of a clue there. It's hardly 'Made in Germany', is it? Sure enough, all the issues I've had are due to poor assembly. And then there's the actual styling. I get the distinct impression that the industrial designer who drew them up was reliving his finest hour at late-Seventies Atari. They looked horribly old fashioned 14 years ago. now they just look like a joke. I say this as a bit of a CH fan too!

All that aside, and assuming you've got a good one, then they are bomb proof and very nice to use. You could prop a car up with the throttle (probably), and you'll never ever, ever have any stiction issues with the fighterstick. The actual joystick movement action requires some adjusting to, but once your in flight, it feels extremely nice.

Or you could just go on eBay and spend big on a good condition MS Sidewinder FF2, which is sooo so much better.

 

[enbeekay]

In ED, the throttle and fighter stick are a great pairing, but be prepared to return units until you get a good one. I had to send back my pedals and stick to Scan before getting acceptable ones.

what sort of issues did you have with them?

 

[Non Grata]

I just recently bought the CH Fighterstick USB and Pro Throttle USB, and am absolutely smitten with how great they work with Elite: Dangerous. I used to use the old serial versions of these way back in the day with the X-Wing series (through X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter and X-Wing: Alliance). They hold up really well, and with the programmable buttons, you have no end of utility. The best part is that they all work natively with Elite: Dangerous, so there's not even a need to program the buttons through the CH Control Manager (unless you're doing more complicated macros). Fantastic products that I know I'll be using for years.

So, yeah, put me down in support of picking up a full CH HOTAS suite. The Fighterstick has more hats than the Combatstick, for only marginally more in terms of cost.

Links:
CH Fighterstick USB http://amzn.com/B00006B84X
CH Pro Throttle USB http://amzn.com/B00006B84Z

Hope this helps!

Thanks for the links - just used one (or the amended one!) to pick up a Pro Throttle to replace my ageing but otherwise fine gameport version. Will have to pay £35 import duty to my country but will be well worth it (hope that spurs you on OP!).

 

[Luceferous]

The Fighterstick pots were misaligned. I could use trim to negate this, but doing so meant that the stick was compensating by jumping degrees of movement. The pedals had a noticeable (and very audible) 'detent' in their travel (towards the top of the movement). Almost all of the pedals from CH have some sort of travel bump alongside the centring detent, but this was off the scale. The throttle was probably the worst. The issue had no effect on the throttle's function at all, but had the effect of reducing CH's reputation in my eyes to that of a joke: Every time the throttle was operated, the unit emitted a loud farting noise! It was obviously something dragging across a surface, and sure enough a rubber sheathed wire cluster was scraping along the inside. there was almost no cable routing design inside the throttle in fact. The replacement Fighterstick also made noises when the throttle wheel was operated. I didn't send this one back but cracked it open to see what was going on. Sure enough, a loose group of wire was draped across the throttle wheel. I used electrical tape to secure all of the wire routing inside and also fixed the free floating PSB to a surface while I was at it. When a company is so complacent and lazy about its products, and continues to charge very high prices for something that, after decades of unaltered design and production, must have a small production overhead (wages are low in Mexico let's be clear)...well, it shows how bad the rest of the flight peripheral market is when toot like this is the benchmark.