Author Topic: Cougar owners (Read 1064 times)

FOGOLD · « **on:** December 03, 2002, 02:42:14 AM »

What do you all make of the news at Cougar? Rats and sinking ships spring to mind. ("nutty" Hallows now).

Any loaded people out there tried the "Uber Cougar" mod to take the "slap" out of ther centre?

Hristo · « **Reply #1 on:** December 03, 2002, 06:17:19 AM »

As much as I opposed to pots used in the Cougar and was involved in heated discussions over few forums, I feel sorry to hear about those problems.

When I suggested pots might still make it spiky, I was called uneducated, a CH employee, whatever...all because I dared to doubt. Someone even called Hofmann (maker of simpeds) an idiot etc. James Hallows was also involved in these discussions.

My main gripe were the pots. Even James Hallows admitted he was led to believe better quality pots were put in. Recently he admitted his Cougar missbehaves ( I guess he referred to spiking).

Anyway, I don't think Cougar is in that much trouble. Little play in the center and spikyness can be cured, but you probably need several hundred of dollars to fix it...hard for an average simmer, especially outside of US.

In fact, I only recently decided to buy one, the stick is just too good to miss. It will take me 5 months to gather the money...go figure where I live - the whole unit + delievery is exactly my monthly income

. Just as it was for F22 + TQS + Elite combo, so I guess I am kind of TM fan. I'll go for Uber mod and HALs, probably another 5-6 months.

Think of it if there was no Cougar. We would all be stuck with CH

. j/k

qts · « **Reply #2 on:** December 03, 2002, 03:30:06 PM »

My Cougar (#01335) works just fine. No mods, no nothing. James has a life and a career, and I think we can all thank him for the time he's put in. I doubt he's made as much money (if any after everything is considered) on Foxy as he would have by putting in extra hours as a dentist. It would seem that the market simply isn't large enough to support something like the Cougar.

Reschke · « **Reply #3 on:** December 03, 2002, 03:35:27 PM »

I agree that maybe they could have used some different pots but they didn't and they got Cougars out to us. Now I have a little bit of extra motion but nothing like I had in my F-16 FLCS and I loved that stick. I wish I could afford the Evenstrain mod with Hall Sensors but not everyone is that wealthy or stupid depending on the way you look at it.

But as it sits I don't have any spiking from my pots and I think I have well over 300 hours on the thing. I do wish it transitioned a bit better from one axis to the other though.

band · « **Reply #4 on:** December 03, 2002, 03:48:32 PM »

I have the Uber mod and Hall Sensors in mine. The Uber mod took away all the play in the stick. The Hall Sensors have helped tremendously. Before I had them when I would man a gun on a bomber or a ship the sights would move without any input from me. Now that I have the sensors if I move the stick to track a target and then let go it stays put. I would love to get the Evenstrain gimbals but they are too expensive for me.

FOGOLD · « **Reply #5 on:** December 04, 2002, 07:52:15 AM »

Thx for input. Anyone know a UK site for getting the uber cougar mod?

Reschke · « **Reply #6 on:** December 04, 2002, 11:17:14 AM »

Go check on the forums over at Cougar World (hosted by Frugal's World) and check for the Uber mod threads.

airspro · « **Reply #7 on:** December 04, 2002, 04:01:32 PM »

I see that Amazon.com has a new lower price with IL2 inculded

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00006LIO6/qid=/sr=1-5/ref=pd_sbs_e_1//102-3062926-2906526?v=glance&s=electronics&n=507846

I would love that stick with the everstrain mod , but with a differant throttle with alot , I mean alot more buttons . I mean just because it's modeled after the f16 setup doesn't mean that it's what a flight simmer would want .

Reschke · « **Reply #8 on:** December 04, 2002, 04:22:16 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by airspro
I see that Amazon.com has a new lower price with IL2 inculded

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00006LIO6/qid=/sr=1-5/ref=pd_sbs_e_1//102-3062926-2906526?v=glance&s=electronics&n=507846

I would love that stick with the everstrain mod , but with a differant throttle with alot , I mean alot more buttons . I mean just because it's modeled after the f16 setup doesn't mean that it's what a flight simmer would want .

More buttons?!? Just by flipping the "dogfight" switch to either up, down and middle you can expand the number of buttons/switches. The throttle to me is the meat of the system where I have my mouse view in IL-2 and it activates my bombing calibration in AH.

iceydee · « **Reply #9 on:** December 04, 2002, 05:04:06 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by FOGOLD
Thx for input. Anyone know a UK site for getting the uber cougar mod?

hmm, I think the only way to get the Über Cougar mod is to send your cougar to Australia - since that's where the maker of the Über cougar is. The hall sensors are sent home to you as a kit, and you'd need to do some soldering yourself, not very hard, think it's 2-3 wires to solder.

JimBear · « **Reply #10 on:** December 05, 2002, 07:42:59 AM »

I would love to get the uber mod and hall sensor mod, but adding $300 in upgrades to a $300 system has kept me from it. Just cleaning the pots in the stick cured all the spiking problems I was starting to see. It works like it did out of the box now, and that still makes it the best stick I ever had

RGJ · « **Reply #11 on:** December 05, 2002, 10:04:28 AM »

Whats the news on the Cougar, I got one and have had no Problems?

RGJ

Slash27 · « **Reply #12 on:** December 07, 2002, 01:54:38 AM »

So you spend $300 for a Cougar that will probably not work correctly out of the box? But for a few hundred more it can be modified to work ok? Forgive my ignorance on this because I really dont get all that you guys are talking about. I am looking to upgrade here pretty quik from a MS PP2. All I know about the Cougar is what Ive read from a magazine review and all I know about CH is from their website. So me being in need of a new stick ,throttle, and pedals. Whats my best bet here? Im not trying to hijack this thread or anything and if I just start a new one let me know. Ive about $400 set aside for and upgrade and I just want to get it right:) Thanks

btw JimBear, nice little big town you live in there, I love the Chipotle:D

airspro · « **Reply #13 on:** December 07, 2002, 04:48:20 AM »

CH Pro Throttle USB , Microsoft ForceFeebback 2 joystick USB, CH Pro Pedals USB .

AH has very nice ffb and with the throttle you have plenty of buttons and extra hats , plus the pedals have brakes .

Reschke · « **Reply #14 on:** December 07, 2002, 09:04:42 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Slash27
So you spend $300 for a Cougar that will probably not work correctly out of the box? But for a few hundred more it can be modified to work ok? Forgive my ignorance on this because I really dont get all that you guys are talking about. I am looking to upgrade here pretty quik from a MS PP2. All I know about the Cougar is what Ive read from a magazine review and all I know about CH is from their website. So me being in need of a new stick ,throttle, and pedals. Whats my best bet here? Im not trying to hijack this thread or anything and if I just start a new one let me know. Ive about $400 set aside for and upgrade and I just want to get it right:) Thanks

Well Slash that is a valid question. As it is with almost everything computer related you take a chance that it will not work out of the box but I am sure you know that. I hope someone who is more familiar with the CH gear speaks up since I know I don't have any recent experience with it and I would like to hear about it as well. I have used the CH gear and it works fine but its just to light of a feel for me and I hate how the throttle moves. But its all personal preference anyway. My current setup is the Cougar HOTAS and TM RCS pedals that are going to be turned into RCS with toe brakes at some point in the near future.

Now if it was me I would buy another Cougar and get a set of either TM or CH pedals. I think CH makes some good stuff especially their pedals but they are set a little to close together for my liking. Either way you are going to spend most of that $400 on flight gear for your pc.

For ease of use and building the profiles I love how you can do it in Foxy for the Cougar. Even though I had done several profiles for my old F-16 FLCS/TQS setup I wanted to go at the Cougar profile as a newbie. Foxy was a great help in getting a basic profile built and then having some guys like GunnerCAF and Revvin around here to take a look at it just to point out I forgot a small thing was even better. With the CCP (Cougar Control Panel) it makes fine tuning the stick a breeze and allows changing axes around on your stick and microstick. One word of caution: don't calibrate your Cougar in Windows. Its not that it does not calibrate just that Windows does not calibrate it well for whatever reason. That comes from all the guys who worked on the Cougar to bring it out to us.

With my Cougar it worked/has worked nearly flawlessly. The only problem I have had was with hooking it up with an addon USB connection that my motherboard came with. Once I hooked directly into the motherboards direct USB connections and not the one that attached through a cable I had no problems. But to my knowledge no one had any idea that it caused any issues like that.

My Cougar; after a few hundred hours of game time still has the same amount of center play that it had out of the box. I measured the center play on both the X-axis and Y-axis immediately out of the box. I had 2 mm on the X and 0 mm on the Y. There has been no noticeable increase since that day back on May 14th. And that is roughly what my 1st F-16 FLCS had when I bought it brand new and it is also what the next one had when I bought it used and used it for another 2.5 years.

The mods you see people talking about are not to fix anything in particular. They are mostly what people are doing to make it better than TM could have possibly done and keep the price at a point where we could all afford one. BTW my Cougar serial number is 04406 and I got it in early May.

I hope I have answered a question or two Slash and good luck with whichever setup you choose. If you have anymore questions please shoot me an email and I will do what I can to help.