Oh. ok. I knew that this thread was old but assumed the project was still on. Bah... I got all excited for nothing. heheAnyway, I talked to my friend and showed him the inside of the Cougar; he smiled and said "that's it?" Meaning it'd be too damn easy to machine the parts. I'll have him do mine as soon as he has some free time - currently he's trying to complete a large order of some automotive airconditioning parts, so he has no time to fiddle with my "toy." :pWhen I have time I will look into the cost of molding a replica of the Su-27 stick. My friend thinks it will be around 250-300 dollars to make a mold using CNC machining process. Anyway, they are long-term projects and I will come back here when there are news.cheers

edit-had a flash back and got off topic there for a second. ;)So, no one is interested?

Hello, all.Ok, that's the answer I was hoping for. Been wanting to fix my cougar since I first bought it. Ok, so do we have an engineer around here? I installed a CAD program on my comp so I could tinker with the Cougar and designing new gimble, but I have no idea how to use it. BUT, I would be more than happy to help with the designing process; I'd even take the time to learn CAD if someone would point me to a 'free' source to learn the program. I am currently learning Maya 4.5 and I'll alternate between the two programs.Moving on...Ok, so what do we hate about our Cougars? 1. The center freeplay - it's so bad on mine I feel like I'm playing with a 20 dollar joystick.2. The cheap and unreliable potentionmeters; aka POT. 3. The ridiculously stiff spring. Don't they know us geeks have small biceps?Do we agree that the above three are our main concerns?Then we need to come up with an innovative and cost effective design to get rid of them. I have a suggestion on number three. Instead of replacing the original spring, why not make the stick longer like those in the real jets? We play sim often enough to warren mounting it permanently on some kind of board and put it under our chairs, so the result is something like this:I believe the above setup also gives us the immersion of sitting in a cockpit, too. Of course, if we put the stick between our legs, the grip will have to be angeled about 45 degrees to the left to accommodate the natural shape of our hands. Try pretending to grab a flight stick that comes up between your legs to see what I mean.With a setup like that, i think the gimble will have to be machined from a stronger aluminum/steel, but what type I don't know. Any suggestion would be nice because I could take that information and shop around for the best price on the material. The actual machining will be cheap! How cheap? I don't know, but I'm thinking 20-30 u.s. dollars - probably 20 dollars. The bad news is that my friend doesn't have computer control machine, so the whole process will be done by hands. But don't worry, he's very skilled!As for the replacement grip, let's focus on that after we're all done with the fixes. But yes, I definitely want to replace the default stick - I am not too crazy about it being metal either. The novelty of having an all metal HOTAS are gone after the second day I got my Cougar. In fact, I think the real sticks are made of plastic.I will draw a preliminary sketch and post it here shortly. I have a hare time communicating my vision with words so I think a drawing would be better.For now I hope you guys can understand what I am talking about.Cheers

Hi, I am willing to help out with machining parts and all if you guys are interested. I am also looking for a way to fix my cougar bad pots, center freeplay, and stiff spring. And no, I can't quit my other habbit! :)I'm not a machinist but my friend owns a machineshop here in Bangkok, Thailand. If any of you are an engineer or can come up with a design I will be more than happy to submit it to my friend and see if he would do a prototype for us. I will pay for it out of my own pocket, so don't worry about me turning out to be a third world's con man or anything like that. I'm just a flight simmer that want my 300 dollar cougar fixed.Here in Bangkok parts and labor will be pretty cheap - so I don't think my friend will charge me $400 for a mod like this guy does at frugalsworld.If you all are interested then let me know. cheers{EDIT}Also, I have been thinking about replacing this F16 style grip on my Cougar with something a little more exotic - like the one on a Russian Su-27 Flanker. If anyone could come up with a cad drawing of the above grip (or anything that we could all live with) then I know a place where they can do injection molding (using hight impact plastic) for a decent price. Again, I'll finance this myself if it's not too much. Of course the design would have to allow us to transfer all the switches to the new one.Yes, I hate the default F16 style grip that much!