I have been using FMS with a cheap joystick for a month or so, and not had any problems (other than it doesn't feel very realistic). For Christmas I got a Flash 5X and have coupled it to FMS with a gameport connector from Mile High Wings http://www.milehighwings.com/joystick.htm

It flys any of the planes fine, but every so often the program "glitches" ... the sound jumps and the tail of the plane seems to jump about 15 degrees to the left (always to the left). It may do it two or three times within a second or so, and then not do it for several minutes.

I have checked all the connections, mostly by reconnecting and wiggling them back and forth, and I can't repeat the error.

Anyone have any ideas?

So, when the tail flies 12 degrees to the left, does this effect the aerodynamic properties of the plane?

That's wierd, I used to run FMS with my old Flash 5x, I built the connecter and had no problems ever. Don't know what could be doing that for you.

Jason

No, the glitch lasts only a fraction of a second and then resumes regular flight. It is almost like a hiccup or a stutter. It jumps and then returns to regular flight. The stutters don't last long enough to affect the flight of the plane.

There may be two or three stutters in a row, like bang, bang, bang, and then it is fine for several minutes, then it does it again. There appears not to be any pattern to the time between glitches or how many occur when it does jump.

At first, I thought it was a problem with a single plane, since there was only one that would jump, but later I got it to do it on several other planes. Then I thought it was a problem with the state of charge on the new tx, but it still does it with a fresh charge, and even when the tx is plugged into the charger.

Since it is a new tx and the weather here has been too windy to try it out, I am beginning to wonder if there is a problem with the tx. I guess I will take a real plane and let it set with both the tx and rx on for a few minutes and watch the servos to see if they jump.

I have the tx crystal removed so the tx does burn as much power. Could that be it????

If it isn't the tx it may be the cord which has some electronics in it. Maybe I will return the chord and get another one. Frustration!

It sounds like you have audio/gameport integrated on the motherboard... In the absence of a dedicated sound chip, computational intensive applications can easily cause such glitches by taking all CPU resources.

Buy the cheapest sound card you can find and disable on-board sound in BIOS. This should help.

The cheapest, but quite decent card, I could find right now is:
http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp...=0-0-0-0-aj6u6

Hope this helps!

Thanks for the suggestions. I am running Windows XP Pro on a 2.4 GHz P4 with an AUSU 533 buss motherboard. The onboard sound is disabled and I am running a Hoontech digital sound card. It is the lowest end card they make (Hoontech makes mostly professional digital-audio cards) so I doubt if that is it, but I will drop in an older card and see what happens.

Today I was setting up a new plane and coordinating it with the Flash 5, so I left the Tx and Rx on for about an hour while I was doing some other things.... no glitches, so it must be something in the computer or the chord. Thank goodness it is not the Flash 5!

The search goes on.

It does sound like the cable. You might want to mess with the baud rate of the interface, if it's 9600, switch it to the higher setting.

tmproff,

SteveV was talking about GAMEPORT interface, while you seem to be referring to a serial port interface. There's no "baud rate" setting for gameport, AFAIK.

I started thinking about different cause of this problem after one of my computers started showing similar simptomps. That PC was working just fine with a gameport interface, when it started glitching recently. Nothing changed either in PC hardware or in interface or in transmitter. If I take the same interface to my other PC (an identical computer with the same hardware, just much less software installed on it), the interface is silky smooth!
So, it looks to me that after too much tweaking with Windows XP (installing and uninstalling different software, changing OS settings, etc.), Windows itself came to a stattering state, when any application, not just R/C sim, gets interrupted by some strange activity. I'm inclined to think that this is not a virus, as I'm running Norton Antivirus all the time. It isn't Norton Antivirus itself as it didn't cause trouble before and, when I disable the antiviruses, glitches persist.
If I strt the TaskManager, it shows that System process occasionally grabs a lot of CPU time. I can't think of what's going on: some network activity, disk indexing, or something of this nature?

Too bad I don't have time right now to re-format the hard drive and make a fress installation of Windows XP. I'm sure that this will eliminate the glitches as an identical PC with same Windows XP and same TX/interface works flawlessly.

Trying to solve another Windows mystery,
Boris

Ahh, sorry, didn't fully read the first post. It is possible that the sound card is conflicting with another device, possible IRQ conflict. I'd go into the device manager and see if anything is using the soundcard IRQ (which is usually 5, but I just checked mine and it's on 11!) Good luck with the troubleshooting.