Heya, I built myself rudder pedals using the designs on this web site. I finised them up and was pretty proud of myself and happy with the mechanical results. Toe breaks weren't very important to me, so I figured I'd leave them out for now.

Now I have questions on the electrical. I thought it would be the easiest part of the job but it turned out to be the most frustrating.

I bought a 50 Kohm pot from radio shack. The "pedals with the toe brakes" plan called for 47 Kohm and I figured 50 was close enough.

I connected the wires and plugged it in. Then I selected 2 axis, 2 button joystick on my Windows XP system. XP said it wasn't connected. A little frustrated, I rebooted, still not recognized. After checking and rechecking wire continuity and the pins I was wired to I did a little searching and found that sometimes XP can have problems with Analog joystics.

I went to the CH Products web site looking for support figuring they'd have the same problems with their gameport pedals. I downloaded the drivers for the pedals and installed them. The pedals were recognized!!!

Feeling somewhat better, I tried to calibrate them, but found that the movement wasn't at all smooth. It was jumpy and erratic.

I loaded the CH Flightstcik analog drivers so I could see how other things were working by shorting out wires. The buttons worked well. Then I hooked both the X and Y axis up to the single pot and I got nice smooth response. Although, the swing wasn't very broad on the calibration screen.

I thought I'd experiment some more to see what results I'd get, when I touched two wires together I got a miniscule spark. Then everything ceased to work (Joystick wise). I rebooted, reloaded drivers, used a known good joystick, and nothing worked. I can only assume that I connected two of the +5's and shot +10v through and blew the game controller.

That's how my night ended. I felt totally defeated. I was >>>SO<<< looking forward to using my new pedals and now not only did I not have pedals, but I actually blew the game port on my Soundblaster Live! Luckily there don't seem to be any other ill effects and I'll be picking up a new game port on my way home.

Here are my questions:

Has anyone had problems hooking up their new home grown analog pedals using Windows XP/2000? If so how did you remedy the problem?

If I don't have the toe breaks, etc, hooked up yet, how do I wire the pedals using only one POT?

I've been seeing the majority of Analog Joystick plans using a 100 K ohm POT. I'm using a 50. One plan on Flightsim.com says 47 Kohm, one says 250 Kohm. Which is going to be best? Is the reason I didn't see a broad swing on the calibration screen because it was a 50 K POT? Or doesn't it really matter?

Thanks in advance. I'm hoping for some insight before I go home. I'm hooking up with a flightsim buddy tonight and I want to show off the cool new pedals!

Mike