CH Products Pro Pedals USB Flight Simulator Pedals ( 300-111 )
by CH PRODUCTS
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of CH Products Pro Pedals USB Flight Simulator Pedals ( 300-111 )
Customer Review: of course it's not the real thing...
Summary: 5 Stars
...but short of someone developing "the real thing" for microsoft fsx, you can't beat these pedals.
after calibrating and adjusting axis sensitivities within fsx, you'll be ground steering with accuracy and authority. holding center line on takeoff and especially landings will make for a pleasing, accomplished flight sim experience. ever try tracking the taxiway centerline with the keyboard? you'll love holding true to the centerline with these pedals, keeping a hand free for panning outside the cockpit while your feet brake and steer. differential braking? got it! it's great to pivot about a braked left or right main wheel, just like the real aircraft do.
if you fly with auto-coordination, wean yourself off with these pedals. you'll find turning from base and lined up on final much easier if you control the rudder and yoke separately. these pedals are a great way to introduce young, inexperienced sim pilots to some semblance of the "real thing". with practice, the use of these pedals will challenge you to give up "auto-coordination" and challenge you to want to try uncoordinated flight by performing cross-wind landings the way real world pilots do...and, of course, learn how to use rudder and yoke to make coordinated turns.
while not mitigating my 5-rating, i've experienced only one detractor, however minor. while the rudders are in neutral position, there's a noticeable detent between neutral and left and right rudder application. if you set the rudder axis up with a zero deadzone, once passing this "detent", there is a tendency to apply too much rudder while you overcome the detent. i'd suggest slightly increasing the dead zone. this would allow you to clear the detent while applying left/right rudder, and then smoothly and with greater precision apply left/right rudder. when performing s-turns, for example, this would prevent the sudden left or right rudder application once clearing the detent. experiment by working from a zero deadzone and slightly increasing it until you can smoothly transition from left to right rudder application without the detent causing you to apply too much rudder once clearing it.
alas, i fly single-engine pistons about 98% of the time. "yank and bank" pilots, adrenaline junkies, speed demons, aerobats, and fighter drivers may not find this review useful once they leave the ground ;-)
it's not perfect, but it's pretty damn close for pc flying!
Customer Review: Very realistic for $100: lets me practice the real thing!
Summary: 5 Stars
PERFORMANCE: Flight Simulator recognized that I had both pedals and the yoke installed when it started up. I selected a Cessna 172 at JZI (pilot talk for Charleston Executive Airport on John's Island, SC) and gave the system a try. My immediate thought was "Man! These pedal springs are light!" I took off my shoes to give me a better feel to start off with. My other thought was that the toe brakes are also very light, and they have more travel than I am used to on a real plane, a compromise of being able to use these pedals for driving as well.
Teething Pains. I managed a reasonable roll down the runway, using the pedals effectively (I thought) for rudder control. But once I was in the air, the rudders were no longer effective. Back on the ground the differential brakes didn't seem to be working correctly. Even with my feet off the pedals, the differential brakes were constantly coming on. THEN...I tried several times to set the sensitivities within Flight Simulator, hoping I could set a null zone to keep the pedals from being applied when I wasn't pressing the toe brakes, but each time I tried this the system seemed to reset the settings to the defaults. It turns out that I had forgotten to disable the auto-rudder feature of Flight Simulator. The rudders are effective on the ground even with auto-rudder turned on, but differential braking is affected when you turn the yoke. Auto-rudder activated the differential brakes every time I turned the yoke side to side, which made me think the pedals were not properly set.
Learning Curve. It took a few hours for my feet to remember how airplanes turn. To turn left, you step on the left pedal, and you step on the right pedal for a right turn, naturally. Maybe so, but we had a few trips off the runway before I could convince my dogs to cooperate.
OVERALL IMPRESSION: Ultimately the pedals worked great. The sliding action is very realistic, and they enable me to perform all sorts of maneuvers that just can't be done without them, like a full power takeoff in an Extra 300 aerobatic aircraft (so much power that without rudder controls the torque pulls you off the side of the runway!). I was also able to do full slips on landing, crosswind corrections, even aerobatics with vertical tail slides for almost 100 feet. See my website for a few photos of these great rudder pedals in action (I won't post my site, but you can find it by looking up my name).
Customer Review: Learn to land in a crosswind
Summary: 5 Stars
At the start of my fifth flying lesson, I made a frighteningly bad takeoff in a crosswind. I was pedaling completely the wrong way, and made a bad condition worse. It was clear I needed to develop some pedal skills without bruising anything more substantial than my ego.
The CH pedals work great on my no-name quad core homebrew Vista 64 box. Plug them into the USB, then install the CH Control Manager off CD. I leave the CH Control Manager program running - seems to work better that way. Anyway, when I resume from Sleep, I have to "Rescan" to make the pedals work - this takes a couple of seconds.
Build quality is good, and anybody who wants to really jump on the pedals real hard should reflect on whether they would want to do this to a Cessna. I do not have any problem with the pedals sliding around on the carpet.
Pedal skills come along quite rapidly. You will obviously start in calm conditions, then add crosswinds. Make sure you research what you are supposed to do with the controls to counter crosswinds. You set up with the stick one way and the pedals slightly the other. On the ground, pedal action is realistically delayed. I found that performing extended runway takeoffs on part throttle really helped make pedaling second nature. I'm happy to say that, starting from dangerously bad, I can now do perfect still-wind landings, and decent cross-wind ones. You will, too.
Amazon offers a package complete with the matching Yoke and the FSX software. It saves a small amount and is worth considering. For less than the cost of 2 lessons, this is a real investment for anybody learning to fly.
A quick note on the matching Yoke - works fine, my only complaint is that the Trim control is way too sensitive and difficult to use. Trim, though, is the easiest of the major controls to learn.
I did not compare (other than by reading the reviews ) the competing Saitek parts. These CH parts work fine for me.
Customer Review: Greatly expands my enjoyment of Flight Simulator 2004
Summary: 5 Stars
I'd put up with taxiing around like a drunk using the keyboard for several years, but what convinced me I needed to step up to rudder pedals was when I tried to do the "Vin Fiz" historical flight on FS 2004. You have to fly from New York to Los Angeles in a Piper Cub. I like flying with the realism settings all set to maximum - with the exception of "Autorudder" - and I like to fly with real world weather. It was quickly apparent to me I'd never be able to land the Cub in any kind of crosswind without separate rudder controls. (Some of my cartwheels were quite beautiful.)
I'd gotten the CH yoke for Christmas a year ago, and I remember having to install software and fiddle with the setup a little, but I just plugged the rudder pedals in and they worked right off the bat. That was nice.
The extra degree of control I experience during flight is a revelation. I prefer to fly older planes, and I've felt much more in control as I've learned more about using the rudder. I can now also taxi without slamming into everything in sight. I had to get used to how sensitive the pedals are - just a little tap one way or the other is all you need to maneuver on the ground, either with the rudder or with the differential brakes. And, when landing, you do have to be aware of your foot position, to ensure you're not unintentionally braking with one foot or the other.
But I still can't land that %!&#@$ Cub in a crosswind! I've figured out how to get it down in a headwind; it's practically a vertical landing. I've practiced crabbing and kicking out the crab in a crosswind at the last minute a hundred times, but I've only managed not to flip twice. Grrr. (If you've had success landing the Cub under these conditions in FS, I'd appreciate any tips you can give me. Leave a comment to this review.)
My struggles with the Piper Cub notwithstanding, the CH pedals are great, and I highly recommend them.
Customer Review: CH Products
Summary: 5 Stars
Well, after owning Gameport versions of the F16 Fighterstick, Pro Rudder Pedals and Pro Throttle for 10 years I have decided to retire them and purchase the newer USB versions. Fedex delivered my lot in 4 days. WHEW!
Setup was easy. Windows XP (Pro is what I run) has everything needed to make them work. Plug and Play is all you have to do. Of course calibration is a prerequisite for operation.
The Fighterstick is modeled after a joystick found in a F16 Falcon. Has a very nice feel.
The toe brakes on the ch pro rudder pedals work perfectly. A must for taxiing a radial to the runway. The Pro Throttle glides real smooth. They've made some improvements since the Gameport controllers.
I've looked high and low for realistic flight controls and the only other that comes close is Thrustmaster. I like Ch Products design the best.
While the Pro Throttle isn't a true replica of an F16 throttle as modeled by Thrustmaster's HOTAS? Cougar, the ch pro throttle offers more versitility. Don't get me wrong, Thrustmaster makes good stuff. I want the versitility. I fly a wide range of aircraft, including helicopters.
Anyy way,... I won't say Ch is the best.... instead,...they are the best for me. Now all I need to do is get off my duff and build a flight simulator box to sit in with a good seat.
BTW... email Jane's/Electronic Arts and tell them to make a sequal to Fighter's Anthology!