I finally got my Saitek X52's twist rudder axis to work

Discussion Hub General Discussion
, , , ,
1

Today was a big day for me because I FINALLY cleared up my biggest controller “bugaboo”.  The twist-rudder axis wasn’t working properly and I saved myself over $300 USD for a replacement controller.

Background:
Awhile back I had problems with a very noisy rudder axis so I disassembled the handle on the “joystick” part of the Saitek X52 HOTAS joystick I own to access the “Z” axis potentiometer.  And!  I tried cleaning it with “pure”, (98%) isopropyl alcohol and I rapidly discovered that the resistive track was soluble in alcohol - it vanished!

Oh Snap!  Boy I’ve messed things up now!
To make a very long story slightly less long, I found a replacement potentiometer, cut the shaft to fit, installed it, (breaking wires all over the place in the process and re-soldering them), and finally got it closed back up again.

Testing:

  • It worked - sort-of.
  • The center was offset to the left - a mechanical adjustment that would be more trouble than it’s worth to repair since the inside of the joystick handle is extremely fragile.
  • The range of values was limited to about 1/3 of the total range, centered around the offset center value.
  • Attempts to calibrate the joystick failed miserably, so in both MSFS and X-Plane I had to make funky adjustments to the rudder profile to get any kind of range-of-motion out of it.  The result being that the rudder was, in essence, unusable both in the air and for steering on the ground.  (Workaround:  I set “autorudder” and used an extra rotary axis on the throttle as the “tiller”.)

Today:
I noticed a couple of days ago while messing with the calibration using FSX - that the “calibration” wizard in Windows 10 appeared to be working again.

  • Was it the nuke-and-fresh-install of Windows I did?
  • Was it the fact that I have a Logitech “game pad” also plugged in that helped it?
  • Maybe the moon is in the 7th house and Jupiter lies with Mars?

Whatever the reason, calibration appeared to be working again, so I decided to give it another try.

Result:

  • The rudder axis now reaches its entire range.  (Yaaay!)
  • The rudder still has a left offset that screws everything up.  (Rats!!)

. . . . So I started thinking about it.  (I’m 99.99% of the way there, so how do I get the control to show “centered” when the Z axis is in the neutral position?)

I tried everything; jiggling the control when calibrating, twisting it slightly, several other things I don’t remember, and nothing worked.

I began to wonder - maybe I need to manually tweak the calibration constants so that it “thinks” it’s centered when it’s actually centered?  And I found this:
https://superuser.com/a/1699020

Which describes both where the calibration constants are stored, and what the values actually do.  (sort-of).
Spoiler:  They’re in the Registry as a packed binary value comprised of three sets of four hexadecimal values - minimum, centered, maximum.

The result:
By playing with the values - I am still not sure exactly what all those numbers represent - I was able to get the rudder to be electrically centered when it was physically centered.

The Test:
I started a flight in a Diamond DV20 at Ostafyavo airport in Moscow Russia, fair weather, midday, and tried just taxiing around on the ground, using the twist-rudder to steer the aircraft.

  • Prior to re-calibration and tweaking, steering the aircraft was more like a Punch and Judy show than steering.  Ground traffic scattered like bugs[1] when I showed up because there was no situation where I could steer the aircraft effectively and the aircraft was, literally, all over the place.
  • After re-calibration and tweaking, the ability to steer the aircraft on the ground was MUCH improved, aside from a slight tendency to want to drift to the left[2].  I still cannot “walk a straight line”, but the steering accuracy has improved by so much that I believe it’s a matter of practice and skill rather than controller error.

I still plan to practice driving around on the ground just to continue to get a feel for the rudder and taxiing, but I plan to try flying again soon.  Hopefully a more stable and centered rudder will make my flying more enjoyable and less like the Cyclone from Cony Island Amusement Park.

==================== Footnotes ====================

  1. Even after I got the twist-rudder fixed, the ground vehicles appear to still be scared of me.  I was taxiing down one of the taxiways at Ostafyavo today when I noticed an airport van driving the other way toward me.  Suddenly the van stopped, hung a wild u-turn, and floored it outta there!  I suspect the ground-vehicle AI remembers me from before. :wink: :man_facepalming:

  2. I remember someone saying something about single prop aircraft having a tendency to pull to the left which must be compensated with a smidge of right-rudder.  I don’t remember if this was true on the ground as well, or should I tweak the rudder’s center point just a smidge more to the right?
     
    It’s not a LOT of drift, but it is enough to - eventually - steer you off the runway if you don’t apply right-rudder.k

2 Likes
2

That is some serious work put into repairing something :saluting_face: In this day and age most people would have just give up on it and buy a new one.

As for the footnotes I too remember something like the more throttle you give the more rudder you need to apply to go straight. However some aircraft in FS20 tend to do that in an extreme degree if there is any crosswind. Both my jet powered Albatros (I admit it’s a single engine one) and the HondaJet (a twin enginge one) does it so much that most takeoffs and taxis look like I’m terribbly drunk.

Still, good job there!

1 Like
3

I hate throwing away good stuff.

Even the Thrustmaster joystick I bought as a replacement, (and is a piece of junk), I haven’t discarded just in case I can make something useful out of it.  I used to learn that way.  I would take broken stuff out of people’s garbage, fix them, and re-sell them to make pocket money.

Hardware, (as a general rule), doesn’t scare me.  Once you’ve been tossed across a room two or three times by a 30kv power supply, everything else seems minor!

4

That’s puzzling.

I thought the torque issue was only on single-engine propeller planes.

Jet engines, especially twin jets, shouldn’t exhibit that behavior.

5

Well, I always say that there are two kinds of men, 1. who can fix your car engine, 2. who can make his tax statement. I’m of the latter kind :smiley:

I always kind of awed people who had the techie talent

1 Like
6

I belive you think it right, jets shouldn’t have this issue at all and twin propellers only if both propellers rotate the same direction. My guess that the torque on the airplane by crosswind is kind of over represented and that makes planes veer off while on ground so much

1 Like
7

Just so long as the statement your taxes make isn’t one of:

  1. HELLLLLLLLPP!!!
  2. A reference to the 5th amendment. :wink:

Anyone who can make any kind of sense out of a country’s tax laws gets a salute from me!

(I’ve worked on tax preparation software in the past, and the various tax laws everywhere have more knots, knuckles, twists and turns than a drunken snake with the twitch!)

2 Likes
8

. . . .which is why I have a special “custom weather” profile set that I call “Fantasy Weather”.

  • Midday.
  • No wind anywhere.
  • Zero clouds.
  • 30% relative humidity.
  • 20° C
  • Late spring season.

And an airport that is both civilized, (Has paved runways and airport services like fuel, a place to park, and a nearby galley to grab a post-flight snack), is relatively small and simple, and is seldom used by anyone other than myself.

If it’s near landmarks I recognize, (The large circular РЖД train-driver “how to drive a locamotive” training track in Scherbinka or the big Gazprom electricity generating facility east of Bitsa on the MCAD), so much the better!

This way I can concentrate on flying the aircraft instead of the weather.

And for those of you who are getting ready to say “But that’s not realistic!”, let me ask you a question:  Did you learn to drive on quiet back roads or on a 75 mph 12 lane freeway during rush hour?

I prefer the “quiet back roads” myself. :wink:

9

Oh, then it must be really something else. I only have this issue when crosswind is present.

1 Like
10

Yep.

But the crosswinds are so unpredictable that I just turn all winds off to make it easier to fly while I’m learning.

1 Like
11

That’s one of the reasons I switched to Active Sky. It really is a night, and day experience.

1 Like
12

And what is “active sky”?

Does it work with and/or is it necessary for 2024?

13

A weather addon for MSFS 2020 & 2024. It improves cloud formation, close to what we had back in the pre-SU7 days of 2020. It makes many improvements to wind, which I think is the best aspect of it.

For me I would argue that it is indeed necessary, and I have written several posts about ASFS, and the differences it makes to wind gusts, and turbulence, giving us updraughts in clouds before Asobo implemented it.

It really is worth a look.

Back to the topic specifically, what I plan to do today is revisit ASFS as it works in the release version of 2024, and compare Asobo weather to ASFS weather in the same location, including graphs that show wind gusts, turbulence, and other aspects of the weather.

Some cloud comparison shots.

Earlier posts about ASFS in 2020.

1 Like
14

May I use it with both editions if they are installed on the same machine, or do I need to buy it twice?

P.S.

For those who may be interested, Active Sky FS, (2020/2024) can be found here:
http://hifisimtech.com/asfs/

15

You can use it on both as far as I know. I think there was a pop-up when I first installed it, where it asked me where my Community folder was as it couldn’t determine it itself. It did detect 2024 though, so I would expect with both installed it would work the same way.

Probably want to take this discussion to another thread if it continues though. :slight_smile:

1 Like
16

Done.

I have requested the moderators fork this into its own thread where we can continue the discussion.

1 Like
17

I fixed my Thrustmaster TCA Airbus Stick permanently. It should be doable on pretty much any joystick. I removed the potentiometer and added a hall sensor instead. Perfect ever since!

1 Like