The Thrustmaster Cougar is a high end flight controller for flight simulators. It's a replica of the US Air Force F-16 block 52 controller. It's all metal base, handles and buttons are heavy and have the cold feel of a real weapon. But the beauty is not just skin deep. All buttons, hats, knobs and axes are fully programmable. The guts have 16K of internal memory and is flash upgradable. It comes with excellent software package to program the controllers.

If you want to find out more about the Cougar, visit Cougar World.

Modifications

There are several modifications offered by members of the community. Here are the modifications I have.

Hall Effect Sensors are precision sensors that replce the stock pots in the Cougar. The Hall Sensors use a magnetic field and a semiconducting material to sense position. The sensors do not rely on sliding contacts. These sensors have a long life of spike free operation.

Ernie "Cub Pilot" Smith had made this modification possible by providing the correct sensors and mounting brackets for stock Cougars, and providing sensors for other gimbal modifications. To find out more, visit Cub Pilots web site: CubPilots' Hangar.

Ian "IJ", is one of the modification pioneers. When the Cougar first came out, he had to open it up and find ways to make it better. And he did. The latest product is called the Uber2NXT. They are designed to accept CubPilots Hall Sensors. These are drop in replacement gimbals that give the Cougar a entire new feeling of smoothness and percision. IJ built these to last from the high quality aluminum construction, to the bearings on all moving parts. He built a C&C milling machine just to make it possible to produce the NXT for more people at a reduced cost. You can find information on the NXT on Cougar World.

Here is what the NXT looks like installed:

Here is my Uber Throttle Modification (UTM). The UTM is a metal bushing replacement for the plastic bushings. The UTM removes the sticky feeling when making small adjustments with the throttle.

Red Dog had some nice looking custom plates made with Cougar Serial, and UT Serial numbers engraved. This plate is pictured near the top of the page..

CADDY made some very nice Drop in Hall (DiH) sensors that are a direct replacement of the stock throttle pot with no modification. Just drop them in, plug them in and fly. He was good enough to send me one of his prototypes for testing.

Files

The primary game I play is Aces High. My Cougar files for Aces High are a work in progress, so I will update my latest files and link them here. The files come with a graphic and read me file. Open them in Foxy and make sure your read them. This file requires some setting to be changed in Aces High. The Read Me file explains what need to be changed and will explain how things work.

Graphic

My Cougar files for Flight Simulator X (FSX) are below in Download. The FSX V1.0 (or later) file has a graphic and text file included. This file requires some settings to be mapped in FSX. This is documented in the text file.

Graphic

Download