Joystick won't stay calibrated

[Sabre]

TM Cougar, to be specific.  I'll calibrate it off line using TM utilities, then get on-line.  Bring up Set-up/Joystick and see I'm off in one or more axis.  Run in-game calibration, which looks correct on display, click "Apply" and go off to fly.  Minutes later, I begin to get odd stick response, or constant pitch or roll bias.  I go back to Set-up/Joystick and see that my calibration has gone to heck.  Also, I've noticed that when I check the axis shaping for each axis, the are magically different that what I set them at just a few minute earlier, with the slider buttons shifted to different place than I left them and deadband/dampening sliders also changed.

HELP!

[eskimo2]

You should have bought a good stick, not one of those cheap TM ones!

Seriously, I don't have much to offer other than, good luck!

Perhaps try your old stick and see how it works.  Then/or take the cougar to Jarbo's or Wabbit's and try it out on one of their machines.  Then you at least know if your stick is OK?

Hope you figure it out.

eskimo

[Sabre]

Thanks for the encouragement.  Actually, I seem to recall having similar issues with my Saitek as well.  Everything was fine for a while with the TM, but lately this has been happening.  Why the stick scaling curves keep changing in the AH set up is beyond me.  That shouldn't have anything to do with the stick.

[Sabre]

Anyone got any ideas? HTC? Anyone?

[Pongo]

have you set it up for any other games...?

[Birddogg]

Originally posted by Sabre
TM Cougar, to be specific.  I'll calibrate it off line using TM utilities, then get on-line.  Bring up Set-up/Joystick and see I'm off in one or more axis.  Run in-game calibration, which looks correct on display, click "Apply" and go off to fly.  Minutes later, I begin to get odd stick response, or constant pitch or roll bias.  I go back to Set-up/Joystick and see that my calibration has gone to heck.  Also, I've noticed that when I check the axis shaping for each axis, the are magically different that what I set them at just a few minute earlier, with the slider buttons shifted to different place than I left them and deadband/dampening sliders also changed.

HELP!

Im have the same problem with my Logitech Wingman Extreme,
 it appeard  few months ago.  Only change to my system in past few months is new OS (WinXP pro). Now, during my AH sessions i have to calibrate everytime i get into AH, and maybe once or twice during the game. I  thought my cheapo stick was the problem.

regards,
BirdDog

[GunnerCAF]

I have a Cougar and I don't have a problem with calibration.  Here are a few things to try.

Use the latest firmware and you can find it here .  There should be a new version coming out any time now and I hope to see a fix for the manual calibration.

I use Auto-Calibration with the current firmware because there are problems with the manual calibration.  Use the Launcher every time you start AH.  Move all your axises to their full range before you start flying.  This procedure has worked well for me.  I use the Launcher because I have a complex program and strange things may happen if the program isn't initialized when I start the game.  

Did you write the AH program for your Cougar?  If you use one someone else wrote, there may be things in there that could be causing the calibration to change.  As an example, if you are using mine (  Gunner's Cougar Page ), there are several things that change the profile and calibration.  I use the Cougar Trim, and if you hit that by mistake, or forget to turn it off, it will be out of calibration.  If you use my undocumented bomber calibration, it needs to be turned off before returning to flying.  The axis profile also changes depending on the setting of the Dog Fight switch.

Also check to see if the program isn't using a profile that uses a manual calibration or strange axis profiles.

If you don't think any of these are the problem, when strange things are happening.... flash the stick and do a good initial calibration.  This is easy, just run the "Flash Upgrade" from Foxy and follow the instructions.  

Good luck.

Gunner

[Birddogg]

Just swapped joysticks and all the calibration problems are gone..

[blackfalcon4]

Sabre,

 Did you copy the settings from a cd?

 I ask cuz it sounds like you have. Got to the aces high settings folder and make sure that none of em are set as read-only.

 Just ctrl-a, right-click/properties and check.

[Sabre]

Actually, I figured out what was happening a week ago. It's so silly I'm embarrassed by it, though a little peeved with TM as well.  The screws that hold the fore-aft rocker brackets stationary to the case were loose, allowing them to move around.  So I would calibrate the thing, but as soon as I started moving the stick around the bracket holding the potentiometer would shift around some, causing the the pot to move off the center position, as marked by the cal routine.  Tightened the screws up and now it's fine.  The nuts on the inside of the case, the ones these screws mate to, were covered in some kind of clear appoxy, that should have prevented this...it didn't.  Thanks for the suggestions anyways.