Like the title says, I've had these for over 6 years.
The good is they saved my wrists as I use them for steering the SRV and it was tearing up my wrists with all of those spinouts! Other than that, they have been pretty reliable since purchased in the summer of 2016.
The bad of them are the overly narrow width which is not the most comfortable setup and I've had a persistent issue with the steering on the SRV which gives me full range to one side, limited on the other. Confusingly, I've never been able to figure out why this happens, why sometimes it switches from side to side with the deployment of the SRV but rarely affects the ship handling.
Final update: Lately they have been a bit sluggish and hard to move at times, so I took the pedals off and had a look at the contact surfaces. After cleaning the slides and the plastic bearing surfaces felt much better but developed some stiction issues. While they work well for the most part, but an extended session in the SRV or even in combat and they get hard to move and the plastic seems to lose its lubricity. After that happens, any downward pressure on them at all and they are like glue. I lubricated them with a bit of silicone carefully applied to the metal guide rods and plastic bearing surfaces and this made them very slick. I went down to the surface and tried used them but suddenly the issues with the steering showed up and made turning to the right nearly impossible. I got back in the ship and noticed that it was drifting to the right, so I added more to the already significant deadzone.
I took them completely apart, cleaned the yaw axis and noticed I had a wire that was iffy. I didn't have a soldering iron so I reassembled it, figuring I would repair it if the issues were still there. Tried to use the pedals but they wouldn't respond and looked at the circuit board and found 2 of the wires weren't attached. While I was looking it over, the wires were barely able to reach the circuit board, the rest of the wires broke off.
At this point I had a decision to make... The pedals had significant wear on them, and I needed to do a bunch of delicate soldering to repair them with the likely hood that they would still have issues with the yaw axis. I decided to retire them.
Bottom Line - DO I recommend them?
Lets face it, I got 6 years out of them with some fairly heavy play time along with a year where I abandoned Elite and all flying games. For a sim pilot on a budget, yes. If you can afford to do better, I would. In my investigation of what to replace them with, I feel there is a fair probability of getting a set that won't last or will have similar issues. I can afford better, so I'm going that route. I think overall, for a $90 set of pedals they have given good service.
The shafts show signs of heavy wear as do the upper plastic bearing surfaces.
Pitting and scratches at the center of travel and heavy pitting and light scratching at the end of travel.
And wear patterns on the plastic bearings, the upper sections were worse than the lower halves.
Both of the pivots on the pedal assemblies that interface with the potentiometer arm have this notch cut in them. If this is from wear, this could be a failure point in the future or cause the issues with the smooth operation of the pedals.
The good is they saved my wrists as I use them for steering the SRV and it was tearing up my wrists with all of those spinouts! Other than that, they have been pretty reliable since purchased in the summer of 2016.
The bad of them are the overly narrow width which is not the most comfortable setup and I've had a persistent issue with the steering on the SRV which gives me full range to one side, limited on the other. Confusingly, I've never been able to figure out why this happens, why sometimes it switches from side to side with the deployment of the SRV but rarely affects the ship handling.
Final update: Lately they have been a bit sluggish and hard to move at times, so I took the pedals off and had a look at the contact surfaces. After cleaning the slides and the plastic bearing surfaces felt much better but developed some stiction issues. While they work well for the most part, but an extended session in the SRV or even in combat and they get hard to move and the plastic seems to lose its lubricity. After that happens, any downward pressure on them at all and they are like glue. I lubricated them with a bit of silicone carefully applied to the metal guide rods and plastic bearing surfaces and this made them very slick. I went down to the surface and tried used them but suddenly the issues with the steering showed up and made turning to the right nearly impossible. I got back in the ship and noticed that it was drifting to the right, so I added more to the already significant deadzone.
I took them completely apart, cleaned the yaw axis and noticed I had a wire that was iffy. I didn't have a soldering iron so I reassembled it, figuring I would repair it if the issues were still there. Tried to use the pedals but they wouldn't respond and looked at the circuit board and found 2 of the wires weren't attached. While I was looking it over, the wires were barely able to reach the circuit board, the rest of the wires broke off.
At this point I had a decision to make... The pedals had significant wear on them, and I needed to do a bunch of delicate soldering to repair them with the likely hood that they would still have issues with the yaw axis. I decided to retire them.
Bottom Line - DO I recommend them?
Lets face it, I got 6 years out of them with some fairly heavy play time along with a year where I abandoned Elite and all flying games. For a sim pilot on a budget, yes. If you can afford to do better, I would. In my investigation of what to replace them with, I feel there is a fair probability of getting a set that won't last or will have similar issues. I can afford better, so I'm going that route. I think overall, for a $90 set of pedals they have given good service.
The shafts show signs of heavy wear as do the upper plastic bearing surfaces.
Pitting and scratches at the center of travel and heavy pitting and light scratching at the end of travel.
And wear patterns on the plastic bearings, the upper sections were worse than the lower halves.
Both of the pivots on the pedal assemblies that interface with the potentiometer arm have this notch cut in them. If this is from wear, this could be a failure point in the future or cause the issues with the smooth operation of the pedals.
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