The SAAF Forum

Good day all,

Usually by the time I ask for advice I'm fed up and need better advice than a Google search can provide.

So the short version of my question, are there any reliable budget joysticks available on the market, and particularly in South Africa?

Some years ago I bought a joystick (it was around 2008), and after only a few weeks of play it broke (one of the axes unable to be calibrated by any means). I cannot remember the brand but it was about R600. I didn't want to spend another R600 so gave up on the idea.
End of last year I wanted to play flight sims again and bought a joystick, again cannot remember the brand, but after only a week's play it broke (twist rudder axis malfunctioned, making it impossible to calibrate). As the joystick was only R500 and had no warranty I opened it up and fixed it, successfully. It only lasted another day or two but this time I was not able to fix it and ended up binning it and giving up on joysticks again.

So I thought, maybe I must spend a little more to get a better joystick, and I got a Thrustmaster T-flight HOTAS for about R950 last week. Quite a cool joystick, and it works okay (got a bit of a deadzone), but after a week's play one of the buttons on the throttle stopped working. Now one button isn't much of an issue to me, but indicates that it will inevitably lose more buttons, or maybe even an axis. So as I just have it for a week, I'm sending it back for replacement.

That left me thinking, are there such a thing as a reliable joystick? Is it realistic to expect a R950 joystick to last a year? Do I have to spend R5,000+ and get one of the best available, or are there reliable budget joysticks out there? ("budget" in my mind being less than R600)

The most important functions to me, apart from the X and Y axes, are a throttle, some axis for rudder (twist function or a slider like on the T-flight I have now), a few buttons and acceptable (for the price) axes response. In a more expensive joystick obviously I want all the bells 'n whistles, with a guarantee that it will work without issue for years to come.

Any advice?

I'm on my second Logitec Extreme 3D Pro. it lasts forever. My first one was bought in 2004 if I remember correctly.

So this one must be at it's end soon as well.

You can try Force Feedback models, but I generally find them "too sensitive" - by which i mean they seem to struggle to do a proper DeadZone around the centre axis. I set mine at 100% in FlightSim and still struggled. Well, I did buy it 2nd hand - and the first owner probably played 1st Person shooters with it. And then they take a hard beating.

Maybe something to think about? Keep a separate FlightSim joystick if you DO play 1st person shooting games.

Some of my flying: