Does anyone know if CH Flightsticks will work with the 2009 system?
Yes they will work but you need to make an adapter. As to why you would want to, other than for the sake of doing it is another topic.
What if its a USB Ch Flightstick? will it still work?i know there was something in the manual about drivers and that the logitechs were plug and play.
From Section 3.1.8 of the control system manual:
“The DS only supports joysticks that use the standard HID interface. This means that if a joystick requires special drivers on windows, it won’t work with the DS. Unfortunately, this means the XBOX 360 controller won’t work.”
Why wouldn’t anyone want to use the original flight stick?
I’ve always been a fan of the original CH joysticks myself, but the new Attack 3 joysticks are WAY better than those white things we’ve been getting for the past few years (I’ve had an Attack 3 for a while myself and I love it), so as nice as the old ones are, the upgrade is welcomed here. 
Do new USB Ch Flightsticks or Old Flightsticks require drivers for windows?
The new USB joysticks in the 2009 KoP are much better than even modified CH Flightsticks.
Not only do they have very stiff springs, but the buttons on them are actually conveniently placed. I wouldn’t hesitate one bit to use them on an operator interface; and the fact that you can buy additional ones relatively easily for about $20 each is a major win in my books. And this is coming from someone who used to love the old CH Flightsticks.
If you have the serial Flightsticks, get a wiring diagram for the serial connector, and just rewire the pins onto female pin headers and plug them into the appropiate (e.g. power, ground, digital input, analog input, etc) additional male pins on the Driver Station.
Interesting. Our three teams involved in the beta test (100, 254, 668) all agreed long ago that the Logitech joysticks, while better than the white ones of late, still can’t touch the original CH Flightstick. We might use them for an arm, but we’d beg borrow or steal the original Flightstick first.
To your second point, you’ll also needs to add some resistors to the driver station. I believe this has been explained elsewhere.
Man, I don’t know where you are coming from. My team found some old CH’s in a set of materials from a defunct team. I have to say the new sticks are better than the CH’s or the white sticks by leaps and bounds. The return, sensitivity, hand feel and buttons make them superior, IMO. If it had three axises, we’d be all over it. We’re going to try a Saitek Cyborg Gold for Mechanum control. It should be very enlightening.
I guess I’m just old school. It isn’t just me though. Practically everyone I know loves the Flightstick.
…so they didn’t build pull-up/down resistors into the driver station? 
Nope. We were surprised as well when we went to hook everything up during the beta test.
Just from my experiences with the old school CHs on a 6WD, I’d take them any day over the Kit joysticks. I know arm driving is a different story, but button placement isn’t that important for a base driver, and the left throttle wheel is great for shifting with your thumb without disturbing the stick position. Maybe it’s just how I held them.
I think the biggest complaint with the “old” stuff the joysticks don’t auto center. But, either way I have a solution for everyone who wants to have a genuine USB HID CH Flightstick Build a HID USB Device
Auto-centering may be overrated. Especially if you’re not expecting it. See here.
As to making an adapter for analog joysticks, remember that the pots in the joysticks don’t work as voltage dividers, they work as variable resistances. Directly connecting the X-axis pin to an analog input isn’t likely to work well. To get the pots to work linearly, you’ll need to build a constant current power supply to draw approximately 50 micro-amps through the pot from 5V. You should be able to make one with a few resistors and transistors, but the point is that getting true linear response out of the joystick isn’t going to be simple.
Alternatively, you can create a sort of voltage divider out of it by jumping the joystick signal to ground through a resistor. The problem here is that you’re not going to get a perfectly linear response from the joystick. I’ve attached a picture of what it’d look like with different resistor values. It gets more linear with higher resistance, but you end up with more noise and a reduced overall range you’re reading from. With the 500K, you’re reading from 4.166V to 5V. With 100K, it’s 2.5V to 5V. This obviously reduces your resolution. The analog inputs are 10-bit, so a 100K resistor would knock you down to 9-bit resolution. A 200K resistor would put you a little over 8-bit resolution. Practically speaking, it’d make the most sense to bust open the Flightstick and see if you can re-wire the pots as voltage dividers. If you can’t, then I’d recommend grabbing a copy of The Art of Electronics, or weaning yourself off the Flightsticks as best you can. Given the plethora of joysticks out there, I find it hard to believe you can’t find one you like.
I can’t imagine swapping the encoders from a USB HID stick to the CH flightsticks would be an unachievable task. FrankenSticks to the rescue.
On a side note, from the discussion thus far I am in the FlightStick camp. Whether or not the hassle of getting them to work reliably on the 09 controls is worth it is a different story.
You all know that CH makes USB flightsticks, right? The Flightsticks are almost certainly better than the Logitech ones - CH makes joysticks for “real” applications like controlling large machinery, planes, etc. Hence the somewhat hefty pricetag that they come with.
http://www.chproducts.com/retail/joysticks.html
As indicated on their website, they don’t require a driver and therefore do work with the DS. They also have some fancier sticks (FighterStick and CombatStick) which have extra buttons and a Z axis.
The Flightstick Pro is kinda goofy looking with that big old bulb at the top, in my opinion. We saw those awhile ago and decided we’d use them when we ran out of old Flightsticks.
They are a bit goofy, but we used the gameport versions of those for a couple years on our robot ('05 and '06 I believe) with great success. We used them because we needed a few more buttons than the standard one offered. It might look a little funny but it worked well.