Cougar woes
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So i’ve recently replaced my Cougar throttle microstick as one of the axes was drifting. I replaced it with a new one but it made no difference, the new one still had the same drift on the same axis but i managed to overcome it thanks to this helpful post
So all was working fine for a while but now my antenna pot is playing up. It’s spiking badly in one direction (up/clockwise) making it unusable. I’ve taken out the old one and tested it with a multimeter and it seems to functioning normally in so far as the resistance chances as you would expect depending how far you turn the axis. Also taken it apart to inspect it as per the guide on Cougar World, all seems in order.
I had a spare antenna pot which i also inspected before installing and i’m getting exactly the same problem which leads me to suspect the pots are not the problem and it is more likely a pcb problem in the throttle or stick base.
Has anyone had similar problems with their Cougar and managed to fix it?
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open the TQS, identify the resistors on the PCB
reheat them with a soldering iron. Do not unsolder them. Just make the solder shiny againno guarantee it will work, but it’s been the case before
and of course, it has the usual disclaimer -
Thanks RD. I will give it a go.
To add a bit more information, when in DIView http://www.derekspearedesigns.com/download/DIView.exe and I view the ‘raw data’ (shown in red) of the antenna pot it shows it functioning normally suggesting that mechanically the pot itself is working just fine. However it’s the ‘value’ shown in black thats the problem and it seems as soon as i move the pot clockwise from center, the value just jumps to minimum (0.00%). I assume some electrical microcircuitry on the PCB converts the raw data to a value and therein lies my problem? The rest of the HOTAS works just fine.
EDIT: As per RD’s suggestion i re-soldered each of the connections on the resistors on the TQS PCB. Still the same problem.
Having read this https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/joystick5.htm I am thinking those resistors are actually capacitors translating the analogue signal from the pot to a digital signal the computer can use and therefore that one of them must be faulty.
Can anyone with any electronic knowledge confirm if i am correct or not and if so, is it fixable if i can find an appropriate replacement capacitor?
Further EDIT: Fixed it! Looking at DI view more closely it would seem that when calibrating the antenna pot i have accidentally adjusted the min raw data value to quite a high value (just over half the midway value) which was causing the spike to minimum when i moved the antenna pot clockwise from the center. DOH!
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I had a spiky ANT pot on one of my TQSs, and replacing it actually helped some with the micro-stick drift. If you study the circuit - I did in detail when converting that particular TQS to USB with a Bodner board - you’ll find some of the grounds/returns are shared and can cross-talk. It appears if you have a defective pot (and probably ANT and/or RNG) it can cross-talk into the Cursor axes. At least, that seemed to be what was happening with mine.