How often does the WOMBAT console break?
We have had two hardware failures in more than a decade of operating the WOMBAT equipment. In the early days of the CH Product Flight Sticks, the way the wiring was connected to the potentiometers caused an early wear after a few hundred hours of use. We saw this manifesting at the Montreal Metro in 1992 and immediately raised the issue with CH Products in California. They have since changed their manufacturing process and we retrofitted all existing consoles with new potentiometers. We have never experienced problems again with the joysticks. Last year, a strong and frustrated Canadian testee broke one joystick from the console, shearing it from just below the hand piece. We shipped the remains to CH Products who confirmed never having seen this kind of failure. It is a rare event, and we replaced the joystick free of cost. To cater for emergencies, Aero Innovation maintains a large inventory of spare parts and consoles, all ready to ship via Federal Express for overnight delivery.
