Thrustmaster Cougar admiration thread

[oboe]

Its heavy and stays put on your desk surface; its got springs with resistance you can FEEL.   Plenty of buttons and switches to map, and physically its a comfortable size for average hands.

It has good spare parts support, an awesome user group (cougar.frugalsworld.com), lots of aftermarket mods available, and best of all IMO, pots you can take apart yourself and clean.

My X45 died after 6 months of fulltime use; my Cougar's gotta be 4 years old at least, and after the last repair (I replaced the 8-way hat switch) and maintenance (pot cleaning) is still going strong.

So, <S> to Thrustmaster.   Cougar ownership has not been a smooth road, but I do have respect for TM, for what they created in the HOTAS Cougar.   

There is no other stick like it.

[StarOfAfrica2]

Yep.  All that weight is great for helping it maintain velocity when you toss it out the window. 

[SkiMan]

MY x45 is over 8 years old and still going strong...my 13 year old and 9 year old and I use it daily.
It may be the exception, not the rule, but I have nothing but good luck with Saitek.

[Reschke]

As someone who has owned probably every high end flight sim setup I have to say that for me Oboe hit is dead on in his description of the TM Cougar. Nicely said Oboe.

I personally love the way my TM Cougar has worked and felt since receiving it on 14 May 2002. Right now it is down for a massive upgrade (new gimbals mod and hall sensors going into it) since the pots have finally failed. I don't think I have ever had to clean them since getting the the stick. I am going to buy a couple of more and over time upgrade them as well for the future. If they had not failed I would have ended up back in AH sooner rather than later.

Now for my X-52 gripe.

I have an X-52 that I am learning to use as a bridge setup for playing games but I can not stand the bassackwards thought process for trying to setup profiles in their software. Nor can I figure out why a company doesn't at least attempt to make a converter type of software for the many millions of profiles out there in what I have learned was the old .dat extension and now all those old files are just left hanging around unusable when you "upgrade" to the newest drivers and software. Other than that the X-52 is a good arcade stick setup.

SA2 your just mad because I never had and problems with my Cougar....

[StarOfAfrica2]

I knew he wouldnt be able to stay away from a "Cougar admiration thread".  lol

Bah.  Sure its a great stick.  After you gut it and replace all the internals with aftermarket stuff. 

Lets see, lets spend 300-400 bucks buying a new HOTAS setup and then spend another 200 bucks on new parts to make it actually work like it should have to start with!

You could have spent the same money and just bought CH gear and been flying on day 1.  AND had change leftover.  I say again, BAH! 

 

[Reschke]

Oh come on now don't be mad at me because mine has worked for 5+ years with no problems until I plugged it back in the other night and discovered that the pots were screwed up. I look at my wounded Cougar now as an investment so I figure that the initial investment more than payed for itself in the first two years....and now I am going to drop in a couple of hundred extra and get things that will last for at least another 5 years or more. Heck I will not need another stick unless this one get melted in a fire.

[StarOfAfrica2]

You know I cant let an opportunity pass to poke you about that thing.    I felt the same way about my 10 year old CH analog gear I finally had to box up.  I still think a new sound card with a gameport would have solved my problems, but nobody makes low profile sound cards that have a gameport on them.  Ah well, a couple of the buttons were getting worn out anyway.  To each his own.  Maybe this CH gear will last another 10 years.