"Dr. Anthony J. Lomenzo" wrote in message
...
[...]
anyway --- more than once, literally, I program the thing for FS2K2 and
FS9 only to come back to it upon machine restart .... and the programming
is gone! Am I missing something? Further, and perhaps this is unique only
to myself [translation: op error in re not knowing how to use it
properly!], I find the quadrant is 'very', how shall I say, sensitive to
sensitivity settings, so what's your take, if you use the quadrant
yourself of course, on a sort of compromise quadrant sensitivity and null
area setting(s)? And do you advise the simple or advanced settings for
best results?

Hi Doc...nice to see you on Usenet again.

As far as your problem goes, I'm afraid I have no personal experience with
the flight controls you're using. I'll offer comments, but they'll have to
be very general, and you should take anything I write with a grain of salt
(good advice anyway ).

With respect to control sensitivity, it seems to me that you want no null
area at all for engine and prop controls. A null area implies a region of
control movement through which nothing happens, which is appropriate for a
flight control (especially one simulating tension-cable operated control
surfaces found in many real airplanes), but would not be for power controls
(which usually have a fairly immediate response, and in any case don't
really have an idea of a "centered" position, which is where the null area
is).

For the sensitivity itself, you want the power controls to map their full
range of motion to the full range of power settings available. I don't
really know how this translates to the settings for the power quadrant
you're using, but I suspect you want whatever is the "normal" sensitivity.
That is, something that is basically a 1-to-1 mapping.

Generally speaking, increasing sensitivity means that smaller movements of
the control result in a given change in the actual parameter (throttle,
prop, etc), while decreasing sensitivity means that larger movements of the
control result in a given change. Put another way, this means that at
higher sensitivities than the default, the maximum change in the parameter
occurs before the control reaches the end of its throw, while at lower
sensitivities, you may not be able to obtain the full range of parameter
values even with full-stop movement of the control. IMHO, neither extreme
is desirable, so for power controls, you just want the normal sensitivity.

Finally, the first question: why don't your settings get saved? What might
cause that depends on a variety of things, and I can't say for sure why it
might be happening. But the first thing that comes to mind is that you may
be running MSFS without administrator privileges (which is actually a good
thing thing to do, except that it can cause headaches like this "can't save
control settings" problem), except that you haven't given non-admin accounts
on your computer access to the install directory for MSFS (where user
settings are stored). Of course, if this were the problem, then other
changes to user settings (like default flights, flight plans, etc.) would
probably not work either.

If you otherwise have no problems with settings being saved, and only the
control settings are causing problems, then I'm not sure what to suggest.
You may still want to verify that you have write-access privileges to the
configuration file where the user settings are stored, just in case. If
it's a file privileges issue, then the fix is simple: just look at the
security settings for the install directory for MSFS (under the "Program
Files" directory), and give "Full Control" access to the "Users" group. You
can get to the security settings by right-clicking on the install folder,
choosing the "Properties" menu item, and then clicking on the "Security" tab
of that dialog.

If that doesn't help, I'm afraid I am out of ideas at the moment. I do hope
that there's something helpful in all of the above.

Pete