I had old pre USB Thrustmaster gameport pedals and a rockfire gameport to USB adapter but hadn't bothered connecting it up as rudder pedals are just foot rests for 99% of the time when flying aeroplanes. The twist grip rudder on my joystick was adequate for kicking off the crab angle at the last second when landing with a nice cross wind but for the past couple of weeks it has been tiring and even 'destructive' when trying to get to grips with the R-22 (there IS a pun).
Using profi mode the twist grip rudder needed continuous significant muscle power adjustments to ballance out collective movements and even with frequent trimming the force needed to overcome the twist rudder's spring totally ruined any delicacy in feeding in cyclic control.
I have spent several pleasant hours with the pedals connected and it has been like trying the R-22 out again from the very beginning, though a blend of delight and exasperation, due to the real burden of having to unlearn the twist rudder which still seems automatic and natural in my many semi-out of control hairy moments.
Using the pedals is warmly comfortable, convincing and natural, an old friend just as useful with the fixed wing aircraft. I did a nice 'blind throttle pull' in the Baron twin and enjoyed a engine failure practice asymmetric power procedure and landing, my first for very many years. The R-22 cyclic control was transformed by the absence of the brute force grip and the R-22 is so much more controllable with just delicate thumb and finger tips on the cyclic.
Pedals are very expensive but a USB to gameport adapter is cheap and many of us have old gameport controls gathering dust somewhere, if you have gameport pedals it is well worth incorporating them into a modern set-up.
I am having a ball at no extra cost, it is great fun but I wish I had tried this arrangement earlier as unlearning the twist grip muscle memory is not easy. Can I suggest getting away from twist grips if at all possible, as early as possible.
The Rockfire adapter is common second hand, its mode 2 (out of 4 modes) worked well in Windows 10 and it appeared as a second colour (orange) control axis in the FS2 control settings. In Windows calibration it showed about 100 levels instead of a usual 255 but it seems perfectly fine in FS2.
