I thinking of getting a new joystick to replace my worn-out Wingman. Does anyone use CH Products joysticks? If so, would they recommend them? DougD

I've heard they are in thing for the serious simmer. I prefer to spend just £40 for a great stick like this.

It is a Saitek Cyborg 3D Rumble Force. They also do it in a force feedback version and a basic version I believe. It is a cracking joystick and, when I bought mine, came with a 2 year guarentee. Rather unusual as most only come with 1.
Lovely to use. You can turn the Rumble Force off if you don't like it, but it is in one respect more realistic than force feedback as real planes don't kick about nearly as much!
If you have lots of money then go for a yoke - though I have never used one - as it is much more realistic. (But you may find you need to practise using it).

Here is a review (rather old ) - but their criticisms seem rather over the top to me.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,689608,00.asp

Unfortunately they don't seem to be selling them now, at least i can't see them. The Saitek site used to sell loads of types - now I can barely see any.  If you look down at your local PC store they'll probably still sell them. I know them sell them at our local PC superstore

Ben

Thanks fellas, I'm seriously thinking about saitek sticks also.

The CH Products Joysticks are of excellent quality. They have a very light touch, so you can make fine manouevres very easily.

My friend has a Saitek - the £40 one pictured above - The springs are strong, so having got used to the CH, I find it very hard to make small control inputs, making ground-strafing difficult.
Ground-strafing is much more precise with the CH stick.

The other advantage with CH is that it has a Controller Utility that enables you to programme your CH Pedals, Yokes, Sticks, Pro Throttle, Quad Throttle etc as separate entities, or as a combined unit for older games. It's simple to use, but gives you opportunities for advanced programming of each button and slider.

I'm very pleased with the way they operate in my cockpit.

Yes, I forgot to mention the cost. But if Flight Simming is a major hobby for you, then you tend to pump your spare cash into it.
You can pay around £100-130 each in the UK for the Pro Throttle, Combatstick, Fighter Stick, Yoke and Pedals. The Quad Throttle came in at around £150,but it's the most versatile piece of kit, and I have the levers set up for gear, flaps, mixture, prop, arrestor hook, Jettison tanks etc depending on the Sim. That's the beauty of the CH controller software - the axes can be programmed to emulate key-presses, if you so wish.

Here's an example: the CFS2 Sea Fury has 9 marked flap positions. So you can set up an axis to perform 9 key-presses on the way down, and 9 on the way up, giving you perfect control of your flaps, plus the beauty of a visual indication from the current position of the axis lever on your controller.
Since you can save multiple settings, you can have the controllers programmed differently for each aircraft in each Sim, if you so wish.