CH Sticks and their maintenance.

DanTheMan

DanTheMan
I really like my CH sticks, they take the hammering that my Saitek X55's could not, and not a single switch has failed.
But! The CH sticks work on potentiometers and not hall sensors and the throttle has gone a little bit "noisy" and often fails to "Zero" so the Docking Computer switches off mid docking and a gentle crash into a station can occur (or worse...a pad violation while in a station.

I assume the pots can be cleaned up with a contact-cleaning spray, but as the sticks are only 7 months old opening them up will be voiding the warranty.

Anyone else out there been through this situation, and is there any advice available?

TIA
 

Trickster63

T
CH Sticks and their maintenance

I to had this and contacted CH Products direct (as I bought from Amazon US). They kindly arranged for a replacement to be shipped from their UK distributor once they had received my fault unit. Perhaps you could do the same.
 

d8veh

d8veh
You can get contact cleaner from Maplin. I've used it on a PA system that had noisy pots and it sorted them. You just squirt it in. No need to open the pots.

[video=youtube;9ZxNtxOoeWA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZxNtxOoeWA[/video]
 

Joey2o15

J
DanTheMan said:
I really like my CH sticks, they take the hammering that my Saitek X55's could not, and not a single switch has failed.
But! The CH sticks work on potentiometers and not hall sensors and the throttle has gone a little bit "noisy" and often fails to "Zero" so the Docking Computer switches off mid docking and a gentle crash into a station can occur (or worse...a pad violation while in a station.

I assume the pots can be cleaned up with a contact-cleaning spray, but as the sticks are only 7 months old opening them up will be voiding the warranty.

Anyone else out there been through this situation, and is there any advice available?

TIA
Click to expand...

That's what warranties are for, open nothing and contact the seller or the manufacturer for repair/replacement
 

Kandarus

Kandarus
Haha, When that happened to me I just picked my throttle up by the handle and gave the base a few pops with my palm. All works great again. I'm serious.

Reminded me of that scene in Armaggedon when the cosmonaut fixed the shuttle engines. :)
 

Kandarus

Kandarus
I'm kinda leaning toward what d8veh was saying. It, in my case maybe, most likely, was some excess grease on the potentiometer contact. I noticed the same issues with some driving pedals I have and fixed it by cleaning them off. This required opening the pedals up but they were just philips screws to pop off the base. I assume that it is the same with the CH throttle seeing as that the jarring action might have shifted or shaken some of that possible grease off. It has been 4-5 months and no problems since.

If you are not sure about send it in but the quality of CH products components gives me reassurance that it isn't something that can't be fixed by the user. Small steps though.
 

DanTheMan

DanTheMan
Hi Dave (d8VEH),

Hope all is well with you?
Opening the sticks to introduce contact cleaner will invalidate the warranty anyway.
I have heard of other doing regular "pot-cleaning" on these sticks, so I will see if I can muddle through until the warranty expires anyway.
I have a can of contact cleaner at the ready :)
 
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Abil Midena

Abil Midena
My CH pro throttle is getting jittery at/near max throttle. I see it in game as having the throttle at physical max, but the indicated throttle in ED is jittering between max and just less than max. It has the most impact on the game when I'm going to a outpost 50,000 LS away and I have to jam the throttle to max and/or push on it for ED to see that the throttle is at max.

I can fix this by using the CH control manager and calibrating the max to be a little short of the max physical throw of the stick. Meaning, during the cal process, instead of actually putting the throttle in its max physical position, I hold it slightly back from max (about 1/8") and click to set that as calibrated max. In theory, any movement by me past that position wouldn't do anything...it would already be at 'max'.

The problem is, ED doesn't use this cal, apparently, and I can only max the throttle by maxing the throttle's throw doing the jiggle/push on it. :(

I'm right at the 1 yr point, so maybe I'll open it up as suggested.
 

sgurr

S
DanTheMan said:
I really like my CH sticks, they take the hammering that my Saitek X55's could not, and not a single switch has failed.
But! The CH sticks work on potentiometers and not hall sensors and the throttle has gone a little bit "noisy" and often fails to "Zero" so the Docking Computer switches off mid docking and a gentle crash into a station can occur (or worse...a pad violation while in a station.

I assume the pots can be cleaned up with a contact-cleaning spray, but as the sticks are only 7 months old opening them up will be voiding the warranty.

Anyone else out there been through this situation, and is there any advice available?

TIA
Click to expand...
I had the not zero'ing problem with my ch throttle. Got in touch with CH direct and they organised a replacement through their uk distributor.
Their customer service was excellent.

Edit: the first throttle got jittery after 3-4 months. 1 year later the replacement is still going strong. From the ch forums I got the impression that failures were rare.
 
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schurem

schurem
Brett C said:
A few hours give or take should be good enough yeah?
Click to expand...

1534.jpg

Shure thing m8
 

Severian

Severian
I had much the same issues with my CH throttle. It was not quite hitting zero everytime, randomly staying at 10% or so, couldn't submit to interdictions and landing was fun :)

Pulled it apart to have a look see, there was a wire running down the handle shaft that was fouling on the lever that actuated the throttle pot. I just taped it out of the way and all is now great again.
 

d8veh

d8veh
DanTheMan said:
Hi Dave (d8VEH),

Hope all is well with you?
Opening the sticks to introduce contact cleaner will invalidate the warranty anyway.
I have heard of other doing regular "pot-cleaning" on these sticks, so I will see if I can muddle through until the warranty expires anyway.
I have a can of contact cleaner at the ready :)
Click to expand...

Contact CH first, tell them the problem and ask if you can open it to try the spray. I'm sure they won't invalidate the warranty. The simplest, cheapest and most convenient solution is what everybody wants.
 

dave11

D
Abil Midena said:
I can fix this by using the CH control manager and calibrating the max to be a little short of the max physical throw of the stick. Meaning, during the cal process, instead of actually putting the throttle in its max physical position, I hold it slightly back from max (about 1/8") and click to set that as calibrated max. In theory, any movement by me past that position wouldn't do anything...it would already be at 'max'.

The problem is, ED doesn't use this cal, apparently, and I can only max the throttle by maxing the throttle's throw doing the jiggle/push on it. :(
Click to expand...

Not sure if this is your issue, but did you click the 'download' button in the CH Control Manager after the calibration? I think with this calibration it needs to run as a map in a mapped mode (I may wrong, I configured my throw a little short a while ago and I run with a map in mapped mode on my throttle).
 

KillingTime

KillingTime
By the way there's a CH rep over at the CH hanger forum (http://www.ch-hangar.com/forum/) think her name is Debbie. Anyway she's helped me out with a few spare pots for my CH gear free of charge before now. Mine was a few years old at the time so if yours are under warranty I'd get them to fix it for you... Assuming you can stand to be without your gear for that long. If not its easy to change them.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

Oh and for calibration, you need to do it twice for each axis. The first time the range will usually be well out then the 2nd will set it within the range. When you watch the axis movement there are two crosshairs; one is the raw output and the other is what the driver outputs to the system. You only need to 'download' to the device if you're running in mapped mode
 
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