homepage Forums Technology Flight Sim Controllers Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog Discussion Thread

The cougar's pedalport is neither 'digital' nor a gameport.
It is compatible with older single axis gameport rudders.
The rudder axis is read as a variable resistor (as used by the gameport).
The toebrakes read voltage and their pots must be wired as a voltage divider.
(http://www.cougar.flyfoxy.com/images/mods/rudder_large.jpg)

The standard gameport/USB adapters are for analog devices and that's why they don't work with the SIMPED pedals. That's what he told me. So the gameport in the Cougar is somewhat different, otherwise the peadls wont work. No idea what the Cougar exactly does inside but Mr. Hofman will have to build his own adapter, otherwise the Cougars stick base will have to be our adapter.


Btw, the toe brakes don't use pots. They use force sonsors for each brake.

I will say that base is very ingenious. Good out-of-the-box thinking, especially if that plate comes off. That will certainly make a nice compact mount for people's pit projects.

You really think IJ's cranked out somewhere north of 35,000 NXTs?

At least.

Maybe 2 grand.

Not that much of course But for most of the crowd, which usually hangs out in these online forums. Most people never go online and download any updates, so they don't even know about hardware mods for the Cougar.

For their current A10C HOTAS, maybe more

I bet I could find a real joystick with a real airframe attached for that much.

Post from ED Forums Warthog thread:

I am one of the team of organisers for a large flight sim convention here in the United Kingdom - http://www.fscweston.co.uk

I have been talking to Gillimot (who represent Thrustmaster) and they wanted to preview the controls at our event on may 15th. However due to the date of release being pushed back it looks like this wont be happening.

Thrustmaster still states an early 2010 release. Haven't heard anything about a pushed back release date.

Well, I think everybody here would rather they get it right when they do release.

I would sure hope so, given that they're taking their sweet time and all even though Logitech and even Saitek have had their new offerings out for at least a few months.

My guess is that they've sizing up the competition (G940 and X-65F), studying their faults as well as their own mistakes with the Cougar, and making sure they don't repeat them since they already have a badly tarnished record with the Cougar.

(Besides, I probably couldn't afford it if it released right now anyway...not without selling my Cougar, which I don't want to do just yet.)

In the end, we (the public crowd) is going to beta test this puppy in a large scale study.
TM just can't "simulate" the casual simmer and the daily stress he puts onto the HOTAS.
Best way is two wait for the second charge of the HOTAS with some improvements to the intial version.

Was there/have there been any changes during the Cougar's lifetime? You could be waiting a while... I'll hopefully pick one up when they are released to compliment my Cougar.

They improved a little the quality of some of the pots, specially the ant knob pot and its detent problem. Still, that only delayed the pots problem, but did not fixed it. And also, as far as i know, there was some changes to the throttle internal board.

Yes there were changes to the board ( http://www.cubpilotshangar.net/page49.html )

There were problem with speed brake too,but the support from TM is good.
Epecially the support from Cougar community is outstanding!

The pots on the Throttle are actually quite good. They don't spike and the detends of the switches are still top notch. Never had to change anything on the throttle and i have been using my Cougar for almost 9 years now.

My Cougar throttle luck hasn't been the same.

The main throttle pot crapped out at some point, and the Y-axis pot on the mini-stick also needs replacement. Not totally unusable, but the response is anything but linear-kind of jumpy in spots.

I can't afford a Hall sensor kit for the throttle yet (US$72 + shipping), so I'm just trying to live with it in the meantime-but that jumpiness sure isn't making landings in Falcon 4.0 easy, where I NEED precise control over the throttle.

Nameless, grab a replacement microstick and throttle pot from Red Dog if he still has them.

Cheers

Nutty