If you are looking at this, you must be interested in how to modify the Thrustmaster (TM) Warthog joystick to make it more functional as a center mounted stick. It baffles me how TM could put so much time and effort into building such a high quality stick, and overlook this one key item. I looked around for awhile and couldn't find anyone else who had successfully done it, so I thought I would try it myself.

For those who may not be aware, if you fly with the stick in a side-stick arrangement, like how the F-16 is set up, having the stick aligned dead on with the middle of the base works just fine. However, if you fly with a center mounted stick, it is much more comfortable to offset the centerline of the grip on the stick about 15 degrees to the left. This allows your wrist to be in a much more comfortable position when flying. The problem is, you can't just rotate the entire stick assembly, because that takes the axis with it, meaning that if you wanted to nose the aircraft straight down, you would actually have to push the Warthog 15 degrees to the left of center . So, the solution is to somehow change the alignment of the grip while not moving the base that houses the sensors and stuff that control the input to the computer... are you following what I'm saying?

After fretting over messing with my new $500 controller, I finally got over it and took the joystick apart. Surprisingly, it only took about half a beer to figure out the solution... and for those of you who know me, that isn't much time at all!