Saitek Throttle Quadrant Spiking

[GregB145 5]

Hi,I've got 2 x Saitek Throttle Quadrants. Both are about 2 months old, both were working fine until a couple of days ago whereupon they suddenly initiate full power on the throttles within the game without moving the levers. This can be from any position. I have had a search and cant find anything else about this issue.System specs is Vista 64, all up to date. 8GB of Ram and a Pentium Q9650 running at 3GHz. All controllers have been re-calibrated, in FSUIPC and the windows calibration tools, there is no movement in values on the axis, it seems to be something else. Has anyone got any ideas or experience of this before? I've also tried reloading FSX with Ctrl and Shift held down to reset the cfg as recommended by Saitek.ThanksGreg B

[orchestra_nl 930]

There may be several causes. If the throttles are really causing the spike I would expect the values to change for an instant when there's a spike. I wonder, do you have any buttons mapped to "100% throttle"? maybe that's was causing it.If you disconnect the throttles, do the spikes remain? that would indicate whether a keypress or button on another device is causing the problem.Allard.

[zj951 0]

Hi,I've got 2 x Saitek Throttle Quadrants. Both are about 2 months old, both were working fine until a couple of days ago whereupon they suddenly initiate full power on the throttles within the game without moving the levers. This can be from any position. I have had a search and cant find anything else about this issue.System specs is Vista 64, all up to date. 8GB of Ram and a Pentium Q9650 running at 3GHz. All controllers have been re-calibrated, in FSUIPC and the windows calibration tools, there is no movement in values on the axis, it seems to be something else. Has anyone got any ideas or experience of this before? I've also tried reloading FSX with Ctrl and Shift held down to reset the cfg as recommended by Saitek.ThanksGreg B

Greg did you get this sorted out?I have just discovered, after 15 months of no problems, that both my saitek throttle quadrants seem to be sending a panning signal to FSX so that when I am any view that can pan it shoots straight to top dead centre ie the roof in vc mode! By a process of elimination I worked out it was the quadrants causing it - independent of which usb port I used. It only needs one of the quadrants to be installed to cause this effect. I got the latest Vista 64 driver from Saitek but that seemed to make no difference.Doing a further search in this forum I found the following....Q: When they first came out, people were having issues with random key presses. Have these problems now been corrected? A: The phantom key press issue was fixed sometime ago with new firmware. Sounds similar?TaGary

[McCrash 3]

Hi,I've got 2 x Saitek Throttle Quadrants. Both are about 2 months old, both were working fine until a couple of days ago whereupon they suddenly initiate full power on the throttles within the game without moving the levers. This can be from any position. I have had a search and cant find anything else about this issue.System specs is Vista 64, all up to date. 8GB of Ram and a Pentium Q9650 running at 3GHz. All controllers have been re-calibrated, in FSUIPC and the windows calibration tools, there is no movement in values on the axis, it seems to be something else. Has anyone got any ideas or experience of this before? I've also tried reloading FSX with Ctrl and Shift held down to reset the cfg as recommended by Saitek.ThanksGreg B

Try using electronic cleaner to clean out the potentiometers. Radio Shack has some.

[NeilC 3]

I am also having problems with my Saitek Throttle Quadrant.I have 2, and the oldest one (the one conected to the yoke) has started to spike badly on the middle throttle lever. I have had it all apart and cleaned the POT. This fixed it for a couple of months, but now it is worse than ever.The potentiometers used are the cheapest quality ones I have ever seen.I don't fancy replacing it to have it fail again in 18 months, can anyone recommend a descent one which does not cost an arm and a legThanksNeilC

[Gypsy Baron 10]

Hi,I've got 2 x Saitek Throttle Quadrants. Both are about 2 months old, both were working fine until a couple of days ago whereupon they suddenly initiate full power on the throttles within the game without moving the levers. This can be from any position. I have had a search and cant find anything else about this issue.System specs is Vista 64, all up to date. 8GB of Ram and a Pentium Q9650 running at 3GHz. All controllers have been re-calibrated, in FSUIPC and the windows calibration tools, there is no movement in values on the axis, it seems to be something else. Has anyone got any ideas or experience of this before? I've also tried reloading FSX with Ctrl and Shift held down to reset the cfg as recommended by Saitek.ThanksGreg B

Note that FSUIPC will NOT report the initial position of axis. You must MOVE the axis before they are updated.This was a change to the way FSUIPC use to work, as I recall. In any case, I always move my axis upon initial flight loading, returning them to the desired position.I also have actual 'spikes' being generated during axis motion on a couple of my Saitek Pro quadrant axis and hadto reassign them because the spikes were causing 'engine damage' in my A2A B-377 with AcuSim.I sugest making an 'issue' of spiking pots on relatively new equipment and perhaps the manufacturerswill install better quality parts in the future....but I doubt it :( Paul

[NeilC 3]

I got one of our engineers at work to strip my faulty quadrant (which I unwillingly replaced with a new one).This is the report he sent me!"Bag of sh1te!It uses 270 degree trimpots of which it uses only 90 degrees. Trimpots are designed to be set and left in one position, not used as variable controls.I

[NeilC 3]

Just a quick update,I posted the above findings on the Saitek help forum and got the following answer"I can see why he might think that they look like Trimpots but they're not. They're mini VRs (we use them on the analog sticks in our gamepads as well) and they're rated to 1 million cycles."Richard from Saitek also pointed out that there is a 2 year warranty and has gone a long way to help me.Now I will keep my fingers crossed that this was just a one off!Neil

[Dicko 3]

Just a quick update,I posted the above findings on the Saitek help forum and got the following answer"I can see why he might think that they look like Trimpots but they're not. They're mini VRs (we use them on the analog sticks in our gamepads as well) and they're rated to 1 million cycles."Richard from Saitek also pointed out that there is a 2 year warranty and has gone a long way to help me.Now I will keep my fingers crossed that this was just a one off!Neil

I have two throttle quadrants set up with 4 throttle levers a spoiler lever and flaps lever. The 4 levers used for the throttles all send different throttle thrust settings to the engines when the throttles are placed in the same position. This makes using the throttles for four, three or two engines is impossible. My verdict is that Saitek throttles are cheap garbage.Solution. Buy a goflight throttle quadrant.Andrew Dixon

[Dicko 3]

I have two throttle quadrants set up with 4 throttle levers a spoiler lever and flaps lever. The 4 levers used for the throttles all send different throttle thrust settings to the engines when the throttles are placed in the same position. This makes using the throttles for four, three or two engines is impossible. My verdict is that Saitek throttles are cheap garbage.Solution. Buy a goflight throttle quadrant.Andrew Dixon

Surprise, surprise, received my goflight TQ6 and the spiking problem is worse than the saitek throttles and was unable to be properly calibrated. So much for the so called quality product, and cost a fortune to boot. I'm sending mine back-not happy!

[Andydigital 93]

Andrew doesn't that tell you that you more likely have a problem on your system rather than with the throttle quadrants you have tried. If you have FSUIPC then try renaming the FSUIPC.ini to something else and let it create a new one the next time you start the sim. If the quads start working properly you know its a stray setting in the ini file that is causing a problem. It could also be electrical noise within your PC due to fault or cheap components or even poor electricity supply in the area you live. Two quads being faulty from two different manufacturers is just too much of a coincidence for my liking.

[Dicko 3]

Andrew doesn't that tell you that you more likely have a problem on your system rather than with the throttle quadrants you have tried. If you have FSUIPC then try renaming the FSUIPC.ini to something else and let it create a new one the next time you start the sim. If the quads start working properly you know its a stray setting in the ini file that is causing a problem. It could also be electrical noise within your PC due to fault or cheap components or even poor electricity supply in the area you live. Two quads being faulty from two different manufacturers is just too much of a coincidence for my liking.

Point taken Andy, but I tried calibrating the quadrant on my son's computer with the same result. I have sent the quadrant back to the supplier who is testing the device so we will see what happens.Andrew

[Andydigital 93]

If your sons computer is in the same house then as I said it may be electrical supply noise, try investing in a quality power strip with spike protection and filtering.

[Dicko 3]

If your sons computer is in the same house then as I said it may be electrical supply noise, try investing in a quality power strip with spike protection and filtering.

Ok, thanks Andy

[Guest Chairborne]

If you have FSUIPC then try renaming the FSUIPC.ini to something else and let it create a new one...

You mean actually going in and changing the name of the file from "fsuipc.ini" to, say, for example, "fred.ini" or such? I have all Saitek gear and there's rare, occasional twitches from my throttles, but the issue is more correlative with certain models of aircraft than just in general. So far, so good.I'm pretty happy with my Saitek gear. My cure for the yoke system's 'phantom button press' was to completely uninstall the Saitek CD-ROM software that came with the yoke. It is supposed to allow the user to profile the yoke for up to 3 different setups via the finger wheel on the right yoke horn, but if I want to fly a different type, I just switch knob heads and profile the changes in FS Settings before flying. Tedious, yes, but better than the alternative. The only other thing to change on the yoke is the head: I'm awaiting a C172 yoke head to fit on the yoke system. IMHO, the boys at Saitek should've mounted the yoke head lower on the shaft, probably an additional 1.5 inches (38mm). That would've greatly improved overall feel and effect, as well as completely cure any issue related to 'binding'.