[Kevin Kolodziej]

As other have said, it ultimately boils down to driver preference. The most common setup that I have encountered in my driving days were two joysticks for the drive and a joystick and button box for the "boxman" that was the second drive. The two joysticks always gave me much more control..if I wanted to go full speed forward with a very slight arc, I had no trouble. If I needed to spin on a dime, again...no trouble. I never got the feel or complete control with only one joystick...but then again, I only tried after I had been used to "tank" controls. Having two joysticks also allowed me to have more control over driving functions. The buttons on one stick would shift me from two wheel to four wheel and back while the buttons on the other stick would activate any sort of plow device (or anything else that relied on driving...not manipulation).

On the other side was one joystick for whatever sort of arm we were utilizing (pull down on the stick and the arm goes up and vice versa). In addition to this (or in place of, depending on functions) was a custom made box that had anywhere from 3 to 8 rocker switches on it. These controlled all other functions, i.e. rollers, lifts, grabbers, arms, shifting to low gear (that one we put a box over the button so we didn't hit it accidentally...but with the drill motors this year, no worried about that problem!).

The setup worked very well for us, but for others, it may not have. The driver of my team the last two years preferred one stick for driving and one stick for the rest of the functions. One year we had quad tank treads that needed to be raised onto the middle points (making a v with the treads) so we could turn. One stick drove, the other raised the treads.

It all boils down to your preference and what is most comfortable.

I hope this helped...good luck!

Kev