me ok i have thrustmaster flight stick x it looks like yours but without that part in the left - for throttle i guess

www.thrustmaster.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/media_large/product/TflightStickXproduct800x600.jpg

for me it doesn't squeak and although it has a thing below to make it more or less sensitive to my hand movements, i find it so hard to play with it. i tried it in war thunder and falcon 4 allied force but is so hard. do i just need some practice and it will come naturally with time just like moving a mouse? i think problem is that joystick is too big for my hand

I have my Hotas X for six years, and it still works perfectly (only that after all this time, the numbers in the buttons was erased), so may be that yours is defective.

One thing I forgot to mention on the topic of flight stick advice...

If you end up dissatisfied with this particular stick (although I hear they're really great sticks overall) and decide to return it or to get a different one, I did a fair amount of research about 6-7 years ago into the various sticks out there, weight the pros and cons of the various popular ones against my own likes and dislikes, pros and cons, and I ended up buying the Saitek X52-Pro flight stick and throttle, and the matching Saitek rudder pedals. Been using it ever since then with no problems. The hardware and software are both very high quality IMHO and work with pretty much everything via the extreme programmability of the hardware which has a lot of modern fancy features on it. You'd have to compare the features etc. with your own needs and likes/dislikes etc. of course however I definitely can recommend these Saitek products with a 10/10 rating from my own experience.

Since I am also interested in this stick, I have it sitting in my Amazon shopping cart (been there for 6 months!) waiting and watching the price FLUCTUATE WILDLY (over $100 swing from high to low price). But let me get to the point... if you read the comments left by Amazon customers, this is a very common complaint for this joystick. I don't own the stick myself, so I don't know the solution firsthand, but read up on Amazon from customers who have successfully bought and applied "better grease" than came with the joystick to begin with.

And by the way, let us know how it goes if you do. I'm curious whether it's easy or hard to do. Good luck!

BTW... for some reason, this stick+throttle is at an "all-time high price" right now, over $470+ at one point this week (slightly cheaper today). When I first put it in my cart it was $398. But I've seen it even cheaper, maybe in the $360 range, so if you are interested and you can hold off, don't buy one when the price is this high.

Tip: when buying stuff like this, I'll "Add to Cart" and then go into the cart and click the "Save for Later" button. This keeps it just below your cart, where you keep an eye on it while you buy other stuff on Amazon. I check the price a couple times a day... it's always changing, even minute to minute! I'm sure there are apps that will do this checking, but I don't want to give them my Amazon credentials (or my email for that matter).

Well, last I checked the X52 cost four times as much as the T.Flight X. I would gladly get it but it's really not in my price range, at least for now. Also I'm concerned because from what I've seen it's super light compared to the T.Flight and tends to slide around on the desk which was my main concern with my previous two sticks. It does still appear to be a great stick, though. From what I've seen it handles very softly and allows for some fine aiming.
Sure, will do.

I'm confused. What stick are you talking about? It's definitely not the T.Flight X. That one's been constantly priced at 50 bucks as long as I've known it. Even the newer PS4-compatible version of the stick is only $60 on Amazon.

Also, I went to the gas station today hoping to get some lithium grease but they don't have it currently. Guess I'll have to order some online which will delay my endeavour. I was so desperate that I almost applied WD-40. Curiously the WD-40 website states that it's safe to use with plastic which seems weird as ALL other opinions I've read on this online suggested that it will do permanent harm to the plastic.

I feel the sudden urge to create a shitty Quake clone called Squake.

Squaker Oats

The X52 Pro cost me about $200 IIRC, plus the rudders were around $160 or so. The non-pro X52 is a bit cheaper but if one's going to spend that much might as well go for the better unit my thinking was. :)

The X52 is designed to be mounted, either via removable suction cups, or using wood screws or bolts. The rudders have an anti-skid on them but can also be screwed to the floor. Personally I screw all the hardware down and it doesn't move. Also, it is plastic, but it is pretty strong plastic that one would have to almost try to purposefully damage. The unit uses hall sensors, which get rid of most the problems caused due to friction and hand warmth in regular/cheap joysticks and flight sticks that use potentiometers.

I don't think WD40 will harm most plastics per se, but there are other materials that may be present in a device like that which might potentially be dissolved or weakened. Rubber for example I believe can be weakened by products like WD40.

Yeah, I watched a review earlier today where the guy called the X-52's suction cups "useless" and I'm not going to put holes in my desk. I've also had bad experiences with suction cups in case of one of my earlier sticks - the suction cups stuck to my desk alright but the entire base would still tilt constantly and I'd get pains in my wrist as a result. It's one of the things I really love about the T.Flight. The base shape and high weight make it stand firmly all by itself, especially when the HOTAS and stick are screwed together (which I did).

According to the WD-40 website rubber is actually also among the materials that WD-40 is safe to use on. It specifically says:

"It is safe to use on metal, rubber, wood and plastic. It can also be applied to painted metal surfaces without harming the paint. Polycarbonate and clear polystyrene plastic are among the few surfaces on which to avoid using a petroleum-based product like WD-40® Multi-Use Product."

I have really no knowledge on materials but from what I understand you won't find polycarbonate or polystyrene in electronic hardware. The website makes it sound like I can safely apply WD-40 to the stick but still, all the comments I've read online have left me worried.

ah ok, it's polystyrene and polycarbonate then, I thought it was rubber. Some types of capacitors may contain polystyrene. Still, I'd use a proper grease than WD40.

Dunno about over there, but white lith is easy to find here. Most hardware stores oughta have it; really common stuff.

I had a friend with a slight speech impediment when I was younger who sometimes garbled what he meant to say (more than the rest of us, I mean =D ). I decided that we'd take his unintentional "ideas" and make computer games called "Quaker" and "Duken" someday. Not sure what "Duken" would have been, but I imagine "Quaker" being a first-person shooter where you play as a pacifist.
...Oh, "Seizures [Caesar] II" was another one. Also not sure how that would've played. =D

(Sorry for the derail, BTW.)

Sorry! I seriously misunderstood the stick you're looking at. I honed in on the words "Thrustmaster" and "HOTAS". The stick+throttle I'm looking at is Thrustmaster-HOTAS-Warthog-Joystick-2960720... note the addition of the "Warthog" keyword. I think this is because it's similar to the sticks used in the A-10 Thunderbolt "Warthog" jet, so that's why they call it that. If you do click on the link, you'll see the very first comment by an Amazon user was how he had to replace the grease in the flightstick! Seems like this issue runs in the "family"...

Good luck, and sorry for the confusion!

BTW: one commenter on Amazon mentioned "Dow Corning Molykote EM-30L" as a replacement grease. Dunno anything about it, just passing on the comment.

Man... that reminds me of a friend of mine that did similar. Back in the 80s at a local arcade he came over all excited about this new game called <spelled as he pronounced it> Al-tair-ed Beast </> The game was "Altered Beast" of course, but he prounced it "tair" as in "hair". Soon as I saw it I laughed and corrected him. He was one of those people though that when he got something wrong and someone pointed it out, he'd argue that NO - YOU ARE WRONG and hold onto it even more, so he sounded like a total knob. Another one was the guitarist "Reb Beach", which is pronounced exactly how one would think. To him it was pronounced "Reeb Beck" though. He always said it that way regularly and then one day Reb was on MTV or similar being interviewed and they must have repeated his name like 500 times pronounced correctly. I recorded the whole interview on VHS tape. He was a fan of Reb so when he came over next I put the video on, and we watched it together. Every single time they said his name, I paused the video and looked at my buddy and repeated the name out loud, emphasizing the pronunciation of it. It was pretty funny, he just shut the hell up and never said a word, eventually even cracked a smile with some red face. Funny how people do that. LOL