I've had my cougar for sometime now and despite the crappy internal design of it, I decided to give a try to Realsimulator's FSSB R1 mod. A bit of info about getting FSSB… There are two different FSSB mods that you can buy-R1, and R2. They say that R1 lasts 10 years without any problems, and R2 would probably go for as long as one's life! The difference in prices is 130 euros as R1 is 320€ and R2 is 450€ not including your shipping. For more info you can go to www.realsimulator.com . I decided to go with R1 and I used their new payment method, which is Paypal. Once you order it, they will send it using express shipping with UPS, and it took mine only 2.5 days to get here. It was sent on Monday, and I had it on Wednesday afternoon!
Installation process is real easy as it took me about 1-2 working hours to complete. One thing you might want to get before opening up your cougar is Loctite 243. It’s a type of liquid that acts sort of like a lube when you're tightening your bolts, and becomes a strong glue after it dries out. When I had it installed, I had to make everything real tight due to the forces they'll have to handle afterwards. I had 2 options for the force sensor. One is 6-8 pounds, and other one is 25-17 pounds. They can be set these for each axis individually. Personally, I found 6-8 too sensitive for precision flying, but 6-8 is a great setup for combat and dogfights if you don’t want to get too tired or if you don’t have a place to mount it on. 25-17 however, was the one I decided to keep, after trying 6-8. 25-17 plus one notch of curve on Lomac settings offers as great deal of precision, and enough sensitivity for anybody to have a good TB type ride. Now, the only and the biggest problem is MOUNTING IT!
Right now I don’t have this thing mounted on anything and I'm still trying to find a way and a thing to mount my cougar on. The reason I want to mount this is that doing full deflection on this 25-17 Force Sensor Stick Base is one HARD task, and requires great amount of effort. It is simply not at all possible it if is not mounted-the only way to do it is to use two hands, one to hold the base, and another for the joystick... which is ridiculous. Now a reason I haven’t found a way and a thing to mount my cougar on is that I have to find or make a mount that can take this kind of force. Remember, I’m not even putting the twenty some pounds of force on the base, I’m putting it on the joystick, so the base is certainly going to feel a lot more force than you think. Right now, most I can do is pull about 3-4 Gs when it’s sitting on my desk. This is ok in some ways, but not ok in maaaany other ways. I simply have to put extra amount of pressure on the stick to make it stay put, and to have the correct input.
My question for VTBs or anybody reading this is: Do you guys have any ideas or suggestions on a way or a thing to mount this thing on?
More about the stick... The new stick base does not allow ANY movement on the joystick... or at least not anything you can feel. The only other problem I have now is that some screw on my stick itself is loose and is allowing very very very little center play that is noticeable only sometimes, if you pay real careful attention. I still haven’t found the screw, but I'm still looking.
As far as the dead-zone goes, I pretty much don’t need any dead-zone settings for my type of setting. One thing you might want to keep in mind is that calibrating this joystick now is a hell of a work out
... and expect your right arm to start getting bigger after a few weeks of flying. (no that's just a joke 
)After all, in my opinion, unless you know that you'll be mounting this on something, and that you won’t have any problem with having to put MUCH more force on the stick than the stock version, don’t buy it. I think this mod is something the VTB leader-Bon Jobie-MUST try or have (not that I doubt any of his skills), a great idea for the rest of VTB, as well as anybody who's EXTREMELY serious about this stuff and is looking into getting into the team at some point.
Right now, I'm thinking about getting CH rudder pedals and IRtrack4 to complete my setup. CH rudders however, felt extremely unrealistic the last time I tried them... they simply are way too loose, and even the Cessna I fly requires 10-20 times more force to move... Does anybody know if there are any better pedals in this price range?
Thank you for reading this and any input is appreciated,
-Funky
