Originally Posted by
Peter Dowson
The calibration is prohibited from having those out of order. The "minimum" or "max reverse" setting must be lower (or more negative if it goes negative -- not all axes do) than either of the centre or "idle" zone settings which must in turn be lower than the max (max thrust) setting.
That is the only imposition. It will not allow you to violate that rule (if it did it would really mess up the interpolation computations like crazy!).
So, if you somehow got a negative value in the max position, or a big positive value in the rev thrust or minimum position, you have to correct those first.
That is all. there are NO OTHER RULES there, only the imposition of order, low on left to high on right. The middle two have to be between the other two but themselves may be in either order. they just define the idle zone -- and it must be a zone, not just a "point". (There's really no such thing as a single selectable point on an analogue axis, even with detentes).
If your levers are acting in reverse, then you should select the REV option BEFORE doing the calibration. Otherwise the interpolations will be wrong. Reversing after calibrating is not good unless the axis is truly symmetrical, like aileron, elevator and rudder. Obviously for symmetrical axes the reversal is simple. For centres which are not truly central it gets the ranges into a real mess. So calibrate AFTER getting the direction correct.
I just can't imagine how it can take more than a couple of minutes at most. It is so stark-ravingly simple! What you see is exactly what you get. There's nothing hidden, nothing clever. It's just saying "my axis runs from here, which is where I want reverse, to here which is where I want idle to start, to here, which is the end of the idle zone, to here, where I want max thrust. That's it. Dead simple, nothing hidden, no magic.
I always advise making the two extremes a little away from your real extreme values, so you can be sure of always reaching them even with expected variations in the pot readings -- and you do get those. They vary with humidity, temperature, dirt, and so on.
The documentation only says the same. But mostly it is entirely intuitive and 99% of users find it so. I don't understand why some don't -- must be some sort of number blindness. Some folks are more graphically minded instead I assume. I prefer numerical precision.
Well, the whole system is really designed to provide a nice reverse thrust capability, that's why it was done, but you should be able to achieve that by making the one of the two centre/idle values as close as possible to the minimum value. Ideally the minimum value should be below the lowest negative number you can achieve, but of course you can't set that with the axis as it won't get there. You might be able to improve it by editing the numbers in the INI file afterwards. But you have to make the whole area, from just above your idle detente (to allow for variation as i said) to as close as you can get to the minimum, all part of the idle zone -- i.e. the two centre values.
That's all. It's much easier to do than describe.
Well, in the 10+ years FSUIPC has featured this facility I've only had about three requests asking how to remove the reverse zone, and my answer above has worked for those users. If there were a general clamour for it I would have added another set of 4 throttles with no reverse zone, or simply put such an option on that page, but it didn't seem to be needed and so would just make things more complex than necessary.
But please yourself. Use FS assignments if you really find this so so difficult. I just don't understand why. :-(
Pete