My Fellow pilots,
Today I took delivery of my first piece of custom made flight simulator gear. After some correspondence with Slaw Device's front man, he quickly delivered them to New York City and from there my family sent them to me in Qatar. There was some waiting time. I felt the lovely feeling of having something built for me. They had to go the long way round, however the packaging done by this cottage fabricator is of very good quality. Even the pedals were zip tied so as to not have them bounce around inside the box. So they arrived nice and safe within an ample box and in a plastic bag. Right away you notice... HEAVY METAL lurks within.
This is what they look like. https://www.google.com/search?q=Slaw+Dev...FeK-cgodD4oO1g#

I am glad I get my mail at work. The pedals will be covered in dust and hidden where no one will see them but me. However today they are on my desk. EVERYONE Who has come to my desk today has made comments with a wide open mouth and eyes popping. They pick em up and "Wow, these are heavy and niiice!" I just nod in pride. Then comes the inevitable question.... How much? I remind them that at my age I no longer go out. Defend myself with "This is cheaper than racing motorcycles!" I say, and then I move a pedal and again they drool and stare. Ha ha ha!!! Better Yet! Muahahaha! They really are that breathtaking. My gamer buddy next door even said, I got to get into flying man. I think, "yeah, yeah, yeah".
So how good are they? They will remind you of the HOTAS Warthog. Here is a device I have had a love/hate relationship with. The feel, they precision, the reality of programing jets as they are supposed to be. Ahhh... Then there is the broken switches, reliability and the jumping through hoops to get service. However, Thrusmaster is no cottage fabricator. Slaw Device is. The Owner spoke to me personally on email. He addressed my concerns and questions. He gave me that "This is my product and I stand behind it" feeling. When I call Thurstmaster I get, "So, tell me again, why are we sending you parts?" "Why should we fix this for you?" as if the person I am talking to has 0 interest in my "Man Child" toys. It really is frustrating and the gimbal... That stupid piece of plastic gimbal! I am hard pressed to find plastic on the pedals. Very hard pressed.
Because we Americans talk too much, we think the Northern Europeans are cold, quiet and reserved. I asked why there was no provision for the pedals to be attached to a base. Why Slaw Device had not seen fit to provide us with four holes to mount these to a wood base? why, Why WHY!? This quiet man did not reply to this. He was probably thinking:
"The plastic pedals you speak of, they slide all over and you look silly doing dance? Yes? You chase pedals all over floor, while I-16 treats you like football, YES?... Well, I am Polish, I don't dance"
Seriously, this is no plastic toy or silly pedal. This is to your Saitek what Godzilla is to your garden lizard." The Base is a chunk of metal with witch you could kill a horse. The other metal bits add to the heft. Under the base are(wait for it...) Non slip rubber pads...EVERYWHERE. Only the two housings for the brake potentiometer are covered in a plastic that looks very professional. Pedals have 3 width options. There are real metal bearings everywhere. The hardware is top shelf stuff. Provision is made for a steering damper. Another Cam for less centering was thrown in by the company and some assorted extra hardware. And then there are the pedals themselves. The Einheitspedal set comes beautifully painted grey and sporting serial numbers. Jewelry for simulation junkies is all I can say. Like a real Bf-109 there is a well engineered and yet simple appeal about it.
Tonight, I will be home about six thirty. I will lock the door, turn off my phone and strap on these pedals. If they fly half as good as they look the Saiteks may be looking for a new home.

More to follow.

Edit: Adjustment for making pedals more upright or more vertical is provided by an adjustment behind the pedals. You can see this in one of pics below. 3 positions are provided for brake spring positions. This allows for more or less tension. There is a LOT of adjustments to make these fit YOU.

Note: BoS for some reason, BoS did not recognize the brakes. I loaded up the Calibration software and still nothing. I then checked the invert brakes and BoS recognized them. Now I again unchecked invert. Pedals are recognized with no problem. Flying the I-16 is so much more fun.

Those are some sick pedals! However, you say there is no holes to mount them onto a pit?

Maico,

Congratulations on your purchase. The moment I had my Slaw pedals set up and calibrated, I sold my Saitek pedals. Enjoy

Ok, Day 2. My eyes are blood shot from "testing" these half the night.
First things first. The resistance created by all these springs is far greater than any Saitek or CH pedals I ever had. That meant that if I tried to get full deflection the pedals would slide on my slick tile floor. Carpeted floors may not have this problem. These things are heavy! Four small pieces of double sided tape was all that was needed. Gravity did the rest. Right after I "glued" them to the floor I noticed that I wanted to put the pedals out at their furthest apart. No worries. With a wrench and a allen wrench I did the job right there. The feeling is superb. I have a very wide and controlled stance on my pedals now. Guys who complain about "child sized" pedals need not complain here. They are WIDE.
And the best for last. LINEARITY is unreal. Push and you will receive. It really is hard to explain how precise they feel. Its like they are moving on ball bearings... Oh wait, they are... Super smooth and really a joy to use. They are as solid as an anchor. Im really happy that I bought these and would recommend them to anyone who is into flight sims.

The development team thanks you for your feedback, we will try in the future to bring our product to perfection.

If you have any problems, please contact !!

I'll show you a photo instructions of damper instalation. If this is not enough, after some days will be video instruction.
1. Take a damper and slightly loosen this screw.


2. Set screw M8 x 50 (longer one) and long nut as in Figure 2. Note that this screw is installed on the same side as the screw in Figure 1.


3. On the other side of the damper set screw M8 x 40 and two nuts M8.


4. Attach the holder of damper as shown in Figure 4.


5. Install a damper as shown in Figure 5 and 6.




6. Move the damper body, set equal value (about 35 mm) as shown in Figure 7.


7.


8.


9.



And fly...

And then amazing happened. I have always tried to fly the Fokker Tri-decker in RoF without much success. The evil craft did nothing but bite my butt and throw me into the ground in the most embarrassing way.
Last night I took the Fokker for a fly. The results with this set of pedals was incredible. My stance wide, I dialed in enough rudder to keep the adverse yaw in check. I used the rudder to train the guns on my pray. As I close in for another kill I cant believe these pedals. Here is the most amazing part. Watch "Dogfights" "First of the Dogfighters". The flat turn I thought was impossible. I thought it was an exaggeration of TV.... Not anymore. See enemy, push rudder FIRE! This maneuver became addictive. Results... After say about 10 minutes I learned to fly the Fokker. I then took on 3 Spads alone. I killed them all. I forced myself to go to bed about 11...ish

I cant describe the new dimension these add to flying. Slaw Device, PLEASE Make Joysticks!

+1

Hi.
For me, the biggest (expensive) problem in the manufacture of the joystick - his grip. I can make a joystick with good mechanics and electronics without grip (for trustmaster warthog grip for example). But even in this case, it will be difficult to have a price less than 200 euros, with a very small production.

A cam based gimbal system base with RAMS sensor in X, Y axis will be a nice option, hundred of Cougar still around, un-modded, and even many Warthog users want buy a better gimbal system.

A guy from in your Country (Replika Grips) can be the source for F-18, F-14... grips (if his plans for 3D printer office flourish). He have plans make a joystick gimbal system.

The planned VKB KG-12 grip that will be compatible with Warthog base, can be option for WWII people.

Seeing the Warthog's gimbal is such a mess, most owners would likely be more than happy to have a precision ball-bearing laden metal gimbals without a huge center detente or extreme crosstalk between the axes or deal with ratcheting/sticktion or breaking the little ball inside.

It's hard to miniaturize cam centering (Baur's dual opposing cam design tackles that problem elegantly) so I'm really interested in seeing what you come up with. Dual pendulum designs (like your original pedals, VKB Mamba, CH Products) does not allow very much flexibility beyond adjusting spring tension and always makes a clack when crossing the centers, although nice ones like you or vkb made at least have hardly any negative tactile influence.

Regardless of gimbals architecture, you should really pursue this, there are a lot of people that would buy them... and 200Eur would not frighten most owners away; it would be a public service really :p

I was wondering how long until you found your way here.

I just sit here and let the smart people talk.

Some notes comes to mind. I just paid a couple hundred euros for pedals I will have hidden under the desk. How much you think community members will pay for a good Joystick or Thrust Master Upgrade? My Warthog sits in the closet now... I'm sure many more like me are awaiting someone like you to come up with something. Of course we understand it has to be profitable. Nobody wants you to work for free. My pedals are a work of Art and Precision. I have no regrets on what I paid for them. If you build it, they will come....

Update! Got the damper today. I must confess, I was skeptical. I know how to use these in motorcycles yet I thought, why? The difference is night and day.

Well Done Slaw Man!

Is the rudder pedal with the installed damper still self centering when you take off your feet? I would say no. Is this right?

It all depends on the efforts of the damper. Pedals can not return to the center for a large resistance of damper. It's okay, it's just physics. At the maximum settings of damper is not possible to turn the pedals at all. In my pedals using a cam with a free center, pedals back to zero with the installation of 12 clicks (out of 25 possible in the damper). With cam with a hard center -will a few clicks more. But dampiers can be different too. (For the F16 rudder pedals this value of clicks is less, almost 3 times. When this force can be larger. This is design feature.)At that effort on the pedals fairly large. But if that's not enough for you, you can increase the dead zone in the middle, using the rudder.exe.