I am considering getting one but the reviews I read keep saying the dials are inaccurate i.e. you turn it one click and it jumps two settings which makes it really frustrating to use. These have been quite old reviews and so i was wondering if Saitek have sorted this out so newer panels work better. Does anyone have any insight?

 

Cheers

 

Rich

I'm using it with SPAD drivers and for me it happens so often that I never really noticed it. I do see it sometimes happen that you speed up the dailing and when slowing down towards where you want to be, it misses the last click, but you just click it one step further. While dailing, you're looking at the numbers and you dail to where you want to go by feel, I never noticed feeling frustrated over anything there.

 

Of course there's better quality out there for higher prices, but concidering Saitek is relativelly very budged friendly, I think you're getting a very nice product.

I've got one and no problems. As far as changing frequencies, it will jump two spots but if you're careful you can get the first step just before the knob reaches the click spot...hope this helps.

 

                                                                                                                                                                              Randy

I have it and use SPAD as well.

 

In my opinion, the frequency-skipping tendency is a design failure that undermines the experience drastically. To my knowledge it was not addressed by Saitek.

I have the panel and use it with SPAD rather than using the Saitek drivers.  SPAD makes a big difference as it allows you to adjust the "acceleration" in the dials.  As near as I can tell, Saitek's knobs are simple rotary dials which happen to have detents, but the detents don't define anything like a frequency step - it's a simple pulse generator, so to get things to line up properly, you use the SPAD drivers to adjust the tuning rate and thus get things pretty close to spot on.  Mine is set close enough that I really don't notice the problem anymore.

 

The radio panel is actually a very nice unit for the price, once you ditch the default drivers and move to SPAD.  Ditto on the Multi-panel, BTW.

 

Scott

Many thanks for the replies. I think this is an investment worth going for. Sounds like the SPAD drivers are the way to go.

Many thanks for the replies. I think this is an investment worth going for. Sounds like the SPAD drivers are the way to go.

FQ dials are inaccurate regardless drivers.

Design flaw.Can live with that, there is no better alternative for similar price