robertpdx

Nice Mark! I've been away but just checked in and saw your post. I see you've made some upgrades. I hope it's working well.

You're reminded of the quality you spent your money on every time you use it, but the price you paid fades pretty quickly. At least in my experience. I run a Saitek yoke and pedals currently, and it's fine, but if you really enjoy it, do an entertainment budget and see how it fits in.

I agree with the previous post. I would also recommend FSUIPC to manage your controls. There is a learning curve to set things up but once you get the hang of it, you'll never go back to managing it within FSX. I just uncheck enable controls in FSX and let FSUIPC send all the commands for axes and buttons. Then you can have specific settings for particular aircraft. Assuming you always fly the same aircraft with the same controllers, you'll never have to fuss with settings when you change aircraft.

This is not a full fledged how-to, but I did want to relay my success with this mod to my Saitek Pro Yoke. Basically, I mounted the yoke into a cabinet on a platform running on ball-bearing drawer rails. I imagine this has already been done, but I haven't seen it. It has been a great upgrade to get smooth elevator action with no sticky points and no detents in the elevator. The idea here is to have the whole base move rather than the yoke rod, and fix a connection from the elevator pot to the cabinet. This makes the elevator control run on ball bearings of the drawer glides. I removed the elevator springs from the original yoke and pulled the yoke all the way back. To make it "fixed" in this position, I blocked it off with a piece of scrap wood attached to the plastic housing with screws. I put some packing tape on the front to keep it slippery against the plastic end cap of the yoke rod. I also have some blue tape there to give the wires a bit of abrasion resistance but it's a temporary solution. I made a base from 1/4" plywood, added 1x2 rails, attached ball-bearing drawer slides, and built a small particle board cabinet to support it all. Make a template and drill holes out for the screws that hold the original Saitek housing together, then you can screw down one half of the housing to the base, and access the screws to close it back up. To control the elevator potentiometer, I drilled a small hole in the armature and fitted it with a piece of push-rod used for RC aircraft. A hole is then drilled out the back of the original Saitek housing and attach the other end using an L-bracket and a wingnut. You'll need to make sure you have physical stops to keep the base from moving back and forth beyond the control range, else you'll put stress on the push rod and probably break the armature connected to the potentiometer. The range of travel of the Saitek yoke is about 3.5". There is about 3/4 to 7/8 of an inch between the bottom of the platform and the bottom of the cabinet sides, so you can fit springs or a bungee there for centering. I did not yet make a front panel, so there is only a plywood strip acting as a stop from the front. I will cover the front with two strips of 1/4" plywood and drill a 2" hole for the yoke rod using a forstner bit. Add some rubber feet to the base, and you can use some of that kitchen drawer lining as bumper material to soften the contact with the range stops. Of course you'll probably sand, maybe router the edges and paint it too... The weight depends on what you build the cabinet with. 5/8" particle board is pretty heavy but I may end up securing it with a clamp or screws system. This also depends on how stiff the springs or bungee centering system you come up with. If you're interested in getting a ball-bearing smooth elevator control, you might give this a try. I used 14" drawer rails from the big orange home store. The tolerances are decent in that there is no up-down play so when you're turning the yoke, there is no discernible bumping, etc. The original Saitek design also has the flaw of binding when you both turning and pulling/pushing the yoke..the drawer rails have bearings top and bottom so when you're turning, you're still rolling smooth. If you give it a try, let me know - I'm sure there are improvements to be made. It has made a world of difference for me especially on climb out and landing. Clear skies, Robert KPDX

I'm in the same boat. I bought the Legacy and love it...I bought the F1 GTN750 and after seeing that the Duke has it ready to integrate, I bought the Duke. Having a great time with it. Sad to see the beautiful 3D landing lights cause the VC panel click spot issues. Some have found reducing water effects to HIGH 1.x improves things, but that didn't work for me. I followed Rob's advice and it's true that disabling them eliminates the click spot problems...but it's tough to go back to that plain "whitewash" compared to the real lighted effect that RealAir has in the 3D system. I'll put up with this small set back in stride, given the quality of the entire package...but I'll be monitoring these kinds of threads if anyone discovers a fix.

I struggled with vsync with so many different settings... This line ultimately fixed it for me: [Main] DisablePreLoad=1 Much appreciated, Paul.