mustang493:
sorry guys i can't get my head round this.. i thought if i use val > 14335 it would work for any value greater than 14335 regardless of wether the value moves slightly.
Hard to get your head around because you've gotten a lot of ideas, and some from every one of us has been wrong in one way or the other 
You could probably understand better if you broke it up like this?
 if (val > 15555){
  // joystick is FORWARD
 }
 else if (val < 14444) {
  // joystick is REARWARD
 }
 else {
  // joystick is NEUTRAL
 }
I changed the numbers so we would quit misreading 14335/14535