Hehe, sure JimBear.
Basically, those little sliders control how much each 10% movement of your stick actually tries to move the control surfaces of the planes. Because of the limitations of our little short sticks and our PC's, it sometimes helps to adjust this so that the first part of the sticks travel has less of an effect than the later parts. Basically, if a slider is at 100%, then that means at that point in the stick's travel, it will move the aircraft controls the equivalent amount. By reducing this %, we reduce the amount of effect on the control of the plane for that part of the joystick's travel.
Deadbands are how far from the center of an axis your stick will move before it starts to effect anything. Generally you want your deadband set as low as you can without your plane drifting, dis-engaging the Auto settings, or spiking. (Spiking is when you get sudden violent movements that don't correspond to you actually moving the stick.)
Generally the reason we "scale" the joystick settings is to reduce the amount of effect the first part of the joystick's travel has in order to keep our control motions smooth. We do this primarily for gunnery, as that tends to happen alot around the center of your stick movement. You need to make fine adjustments near that point, and having your stick be just as sensitive near the center as at the ends of travel makes that very difficult. The solution most use is to start the sliders low and slowly ramp them up toward the end. If you go into AH joystick setup and watch the little graph, it will show you how your plane's controls are moving as you move your stick.
Generally, a parabolic curve upward for pitch is great. I use all 100's for roll, and a more linear pattern from top to bottom for yaw.
Damping is exactly that... it "dampens" your control inputs so they aren't so violent. If you have tried decreasing your scaling sliders in the early part of the stick's travel but still see some "bounce" near the center, try easing the damper slider up a bit. This will have the effect of delaying your control actions, the higher the slider the more the delay. I typically use very little to none in roll, very little in pitch, and a bit more in yaw.. lets say 1/4 or the travel or so. Play with these setting yourself and see what you like. Some folks like 'em all 100, and some scale them down drastically. As long as you have some kind of a smooth transition, just find a setting you like.
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Lephturn
The Flying Pigs
