Sticks and Stuff

Now to fly IL2 competitively the minimum you require is a stick with throttle, twist rudder and a hat switch to control your point of view. Some of the best players around get by with only this. Before rushing out to buy one, stop…read a bit further and ask around the other pilots. What follows is the collected wisdom of the squad on the subject.

What to avoid

Do not buy cordless sticks. They require a battery to work and the battery inevitably goes flat and stops working in the middle of a mission.

Do not buy any stick made by Logitek. They look good, feel good start disfunctioning after several months, you take them apart and maby fix them they break again and you throw them in the corner with the rest of the junk. However if you have a broken logitek stick talk to Stenka about it – he can use some of the components to convert gameport sticks and pedals. Note that whilr their sticks are crap Logitech do make some other excellent accesories. I currently use one of their waterproof keyboards. It looks normal but you can pour a pint of beer into the keyboard and it drips itself dry out of special little slots. As these keyboards only cost about 10 Euros I bought 2 and have a spare one stitting ready for the next ditching. While we are on the subject of keyboards again avoid cordless and avoid USB as you always need more USB slots.

On Ebay you can get lots of good cheap sticks that use a gameport. Now do you know why they’re cheap? It’s because gameport is obselete. No-one makes computers with gameport any more. Vista does not support gamport devices. OK you might fiddle around and get it working or you might not. Simple game-port to USB conversion cables mostly do not work. The only way to convert gameport stuff to USB is to transplant in electronics from a donor USB stick. Having said that I collect high quality gameport stuff and convert it to USB so send me your broken sticks.

What to buy

The most common stick in use with the squad is the Saitek X52. This has a great Hotas throttle, twist rudder, all the buttons, rotaries, sliders and programing software you can use and the standard version is cheap. If you are in the USA you can also buy reconditioned X52s from the official Saitek website with a factory guarantee at something near half price. There is a pro version that costs a lot more for not a lot more functionality – great for rich gits. Personaly I’ve bought and used both the X45 predecessor and still use the X52 throttle they have been good reliable kit.

Saitek do a throttle quadrant – well actualy it’s got 3 levers and if you get two you’ll have 6! This is great for fine control of trim or flaps – or even for use as a throttle. Note in IL2 you can not control multi engine planes engines on separte levers. When BOB comes out we should have this so quadrants will be far more usable and you can use asymetric throttle control in aerobatics with a twin engine plane. Note while a single Saitek throttle quadrant is cheap you might be better to buy a single CH products quadrant (with 6 levers) rather than 2 Saitek ones. LEFT HANDED PILOTS can use the throttle quadrant with their right hand wheras all Hotas throttles seem to be made for the left hand.

Thrustmaster do a very wide range of sticks ranging from plastic trash to top dollar. The ultimate is the Cougar Hotas. It is huge, it is metal, it is heavy, yes really heavy. Conan swears by it and says it has a real feel – he should know. I’m currently using the gamport predecessor to the Cougar called the X-fighter and it’s arguably the best stick I’ve had. Only problem is that the Cougar is $$$. Watch Ebay sometimes they come up second hand.

CH products do a range of sticks and hotas throttles. They are well made, robust, precise and a stick on it’s own is not that expensive. A nice feature is hardware trim on your X and Y axes. Currently I have a gameport stick awaiting USB conversion. It’s a bit lightly sprung and sloppy compared to the Thrustmaster but I had a look inside and it’s well engineered. I’ll give it a test when I have some time.

Microsoft used to make the best force feedback sticks on the market. Now most force feedback sticks rattle around a bit when your guns fire and wobble when approaching stall – quite honestly it’s 80% gimmick. I’ve used Saitek and Logitek FF sticks and they’re not worth it. However the beauty of the Mcrosoft sticks is that they gave progressive force feedback to the stick action so when you try to force a control movement the stick would resist. Brilliant! You can get gamport MSFF sticks cheap – but read what I wrote about gameport. In fact If you want a gameport MS FF stick I’ve got one on the shelf for a good price. What’s more interesting but quite rare is the MS FF 2 USB stick. These go for $$$ on Ebay. Again I’ve got one of these on the shelf too. So if it’s so good why don’t I use it? Well it appears there is some kind of bug in IL2 at the moment. The Force feedback works offline but immediately you are online it stops working. Maby it’ll be fixed with 4.09m, maby it’ll be fixed with BOB. Also beware – these sticks are not supported under Vista lots of problems to install – some people claim to have got them to work – I didn’t succeed when I tested installation on my laptop.

Rudder pedals

While you can get by with a twist stick it does not give you the precise separate rudder control that you get with pedals. All real planes have rudder pedals so if you want a realistic simulator pedals are fairly high on the priority list.

Saitek do the cheapest . They are widely spaced for precise control and several happy users say they’re great.

CH products was for a long time virtualy the only supplier of rudder pedals. So a lot of us have these. They are very robust and long lasting. On mine after some heavy use the wires inside broke so I rewired it and did a simple conversion to reduce the stress point. If your pedals seem to be spiking go to calibration and if and of the pedal exes are not responding I can tell you how to fix it. Watch out on Ebay – often you will see gameport CH pedals. Avoid these unless they are very cheap. I can tell you how to convert these to USB but you need the right donor stick.

Thrustmaster used to do rudder pedals, you might find some on Ebay. I have a set of these waiting for USB conversion. They are a well made nice design lots of metal. I’ll tell you what they’re like after conversion.

Simped is the rolls royce of sim pedals or should I say the Mercedes. Herman Goering would have approved of these, just make sure he pays your credit card bill.

UPS

Uninteruptable Power Supplies are what you find on the commercial servers we make at work. It only takes a fraction of a seconds power glitch to knock you out of a game. These may be commoner than you think but you will soon find out. Basicly an UPS is a battery that keeps your computer going until power is restored. Now do not rush down the supermarket and buy one - you will be dissapointed. To keep your system running while under attack you need to supply the gaming rig with 400+ watts of power, your screen and your router. This means you need at least 1000VA. So this UPS will be as big as a big car battery and will weigh like one too. You can get a good one for around 140 Euros/dollars. If it's lighter/smaller/cheaper don't bother, the battery will be overloaded pronto and screw up.

Disclaimer - I don't sell sticks - I actualy buy them and use them and listen to other people that buy and use them. I also take them apart to mend them or do conversions. So if you are a manufacturer and feel that I've slandered your product that's tough - being specific here in the case of logitek I have given you my money on three separate occasions for joysticks and that gives me a right to have an opinion.