Making your joystick more helicopter-friendly

Helicopters are wild beasts. They are tough to control, even with the best joystick in the market. Unless you purchased a cyclic unit, you are probably using a regular joystick with a centering mechanism -- usually a spring. For a while I have struggled with the joystick I had in order to better control helicopters. Not anymore. So, what can you do to make your joystick more helicopter-friendly?


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.helisimmer.com/tips-and-tricks/making-your-joystick-more-helicopter-friendly/

Hi there, I have just received my Saitek X45 in order to use with helicopters in Xplane. I am wanting to go all out with a new computer VR and a Puma control but for now all I have is this joystick, which I have zip tied and an older MacBook Pro, It doesn’t seem to calibrate correctly, any advise would be helpful as it seems impossible to fly at the moment.

Hello Tuidub. I am not experienced with Macs so I am not sure how to help. Did you try to calibrate it in X-Plane and it doesn’t work well? What’s wrong? Can you describe the results you’re having?

Hi, So it was just not running at all on the Mac 1-2fps So have a older PC now running X-Plane 11 now, working fine at 40fps at all low settings. Will do for now until I work out the best upgrade options. Thanks for reply, only just saw this now. After watching your seminar again I moved all sensitive sliders to 0 that’s a lot of fun, haha thanks again.

Great! I’m glad that you are managing to have some fun with it!

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