Until recently, the only affordable rudder pedals out there were based on general aviation designs or even hybrid flight/racing game designs – not conducive to combat flight simulation. Saitek has released their new Pro Flight Combat Rudder Pedals to the cheers of armchair pilots everywhere. The Saitek Pro Flight Combat Rudder Pedals feature a di-cast metal construction and sturdy base station which won’t go slipping out underneath your feet during use. They feature an independent right and left brake axis in addition to the standard rudder axis.
Setting up the Combat Rudder Pedals is very simply – simply get the pedals into position, route the USB cable to an available USB 2.0 port, and install the software. The CD installs not only the rudder pedal drivers but also Saitek’s SST programming software. This software suite allows you to chain key presses together based on controller input – not so important for a peripheral like rudder pedals, but still useful. Thankfully, the pedals are usable as a USB controller without the SST software, so if you don’t want to program it via that system you can always assign axis and brakes through your flight simulator of choice.
For our review of the Combat Rudder Pedals, we hooked it up to our ‘pit and ran in both Microsoft’s Flight Simulator X as well as the new, and highly-realistic, DCS: A-10C Warthog. Flying various airframes in Flight Simulator X, both CivAv and heavy, the pedals performed very smoothly and I did not have to do any axis curve alterations at all. In the new DCS: A-10C Warthog, the pedals performed equally-well, but I had to adjust the curve of the pedal axis to 30 in-game and also add a dead zone of 20 as they were a bit too responsive by default (they needed a bit of “squish”). Additionally, the brake functionality of the pedals worked great, and allowed for far easier taxiing than I had previously-experienced. In DCS, I had to adjust the brake curve and dead zone to 20. Otherwise, I would get some brake stick – which is probably more of an issue with that simulation than the peripherals as FSX had no brake stick.
For about $200 dollars, the Saitek Pro Flight Combat Rudder Pedals are the perfect pedal choice for the armchair fighter jock. With rock-solid construction and great performance, more higher-end models cost greater than double its price point – making this the best game in town for consumers not wanting to put a torn-out F-15C Eagle cockpit in their office as a sim-pit.
The Combat Rudder Pedals are available now at Saitek/Mad Catz/Gameshark’s online store.
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Pro’s
- Strong
- Durable
- Great performance
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Con’s
- Price is not cheap during an economic down-turn
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