What a golden age of spoils we flight simmers live in. We have come a long way from plastic toys to full on metal replicas.
There was a time when I thought I never would let go of my Microsoft FFB2 joysticks. Real Simulation and DCS had other plans. I regretfully gave it up for 4 hats and a real gimbal. There was a love affair with X45/X-52/52Pro. It really was good, I swore by them. But they were again plastic and prone to breakage.
Then in 2013-2014 Thrustmaster cornered our market. And what a great corner it was. For a while… I will never forget YOU Thrustmaster. The Original, the innovator. The King of Flight sims for what… 10+ years? BTW, Warthog was not their first stick. They were just catering to a high market. A niche if you will. 2019 brought the addition of the Hornet stick. It was a sensation. Now I had the Navy birds like F-18 and A-4 and F-15 covered by the F-18 stick. The A-10/F-16/ air force stick on the A-10 stick. Life was good but while some problems were never rectified. IM LOOKING AT YOU, GIMBAL! No other throttles or sticks seemed to be coming. While we, the natives got restless, new players emerged as if from nowhere. They prepared to eat TM’s Lunch. By the time TM got off its butt with the AVA base, the market was being saturated by competition. The fight was over before it has even begun…
My first stray from TM was a Virpil base. What a wonderful company. I bought desk mounts, and I love them. They are beautiful, sturdy and versatile. They held my Throttle, sticks and even my Keyboard and mouse. But it was that T-50M2 that really got my attention. It made the TM base with its stiction and weak plastic gimbal obsolete. The aluminum construction was honest and gave me lots of ways to play… Return to center, no return, strong springs, weak springs… Great piece of hardware. It cant remain unsaid at this moment, that for its price point, TM should have fixed the Warthog gimbal.
Then in the Summer of 2022 the Sim world seemed to explode. I acquired the WinWing the F-16EX Throttle and the F-18 Handles. Suddenly there was choice. I didnt want to let go of my Thrustmaster handles just yet. After all I have so many aircraft covered with the two handles. Also, I had the good enough mentality.
I had my personal troubles in 2024. It was a stormy year in witch I had little time for settling into a good cockpit. Lucky for me, good friends and a girl kept me from loosing my mind. Mudspike was also very supportive. I finally settled down in Seattle in September. My year of ruin had my stuff scattered from Thailand to Qatar and Kentucky. But I finally was able to retrieve most of my stuff and I am back in the saddle. I have had some stuff for a year but never had a chance to open it. Now I can begin enjoying it. And enjoy it I will.
I busted out my WinWing TO Panel and have not used it yet because I imediatly got bit by the helicopter bug thanks to Eight Ball and Tobsen’s OH-6A magnificent Mod.
So last week I put together the WinWing Collective on to my chair. This is versatile. I can use it for the Huey, the Cayuse, Apache, Ka-50 of course and the Kiowa when I get it. I never had a collective before and it has been a real game changer. Moving along the terrain and hoping and dipping as I move my arm seems so Right. I would have bought the Virpil one, but I missed the bus. Perhaps another day…
A couple of days ago, a conversation with @PaulRix convinced me and I decided to mount my F-16EX with double sided tape. A necessity now that Virpil dropped the TM adapter for their desk mounts. BAD VIRPIL! The WinWing stick is, to me another game changer. Its way lighter than the Thrustmaster stick and the base feels more precise that the Virpil base. Now again, I never changed springs and cams on the Virpil but the WW just feels good. It Definitely helps make that darn Angry Egg more manageable. Its so good in fact, I may get the WW F-18 Handle…
So it would be safe to say that the TM days are not over, but to me they are fading. It is 10+ years or so old now. While TM was resting on its Laurels others were innovating our hobby. They have made themselves worthy of our hard earnings. The bar has been raised. It would be, to me, exciting and surprising to see Thrustmaster become a force to be reconned with. But of course, its a fickle market. They make 10% of the money from flight sim gear and the other 90% from wheels. Racing is where the money is. Anyway, time will tell. It may not be the beginning of the end for TM, but it is the end of the beginning.
So what is in store? I have a MOZA base awaiting a mounting solution that is on the slow boat from … Shenzhen China. Its not the kind of base you just put anywhere. Its HUGE. So there will some challenges. I do however beleive that the rewards will be worth the effort.
In my possession I have an AH-64 collective handle. I am waiting for the dust to settle so I can get the Virpil base for it. But i need to get more whirly bird time before I get there. Slowly, slowly, catchy monkey… right?
I traded up on my Warthog when the CMS micro switches died a couple years ago (because who knew they were five individual switches inside that hat?), for the Virpil stick I have now. I’m waiting just a bit longer for FFB to mature, not to mention my flight simming time is severely restricted these days.
The next big upgrade will likely be the pit itself- the Obutto is getting to the limit of compatibility with mounting new gear, and by all indications the company is out of business.
There’s so much other gear I’d love to get my hands on, but the physical limits of the R3volution and the practical limits of my very overloaded schedule are seriously helping my wallet right now.
I received a 10cm extension from VirPil today which allowed me to lower the AB9 base as far as the SimFab mount allows. The grip is now at the perfect height, so I am really pleased with this setup.
It is amazing to me how many different choices we have these days for controller combinations… I have a VirPil Throttle and stick grip, MFG Crosswinds pedal, and a Moza FFB stick base… not to mention the Honeycomb Bravo clamped to my desk and a TM Boeing Yoke sat in the closet for the time being.
I started in this hobby with a Quickshot II Turbo joystick that used microswitches. It had a trigger and a thumb button… oh how far we have come in the past 40 years.
Same here. Though it wasn’t spangly red.
So spoilt now.
/showing your age
I was 12 years old when my Dad bought that stick for me…. So yes, definitely showing my age. 
That was the fancy one. 
TM have definitely taken their eye off the ball when it comes to Flight sims and WinWing or Virpil is where it is at these days. When I need to replace my Warthog it will def be WW or Virpil.
Which is a bit of a shame, because TM gear has served me well for nearly 30 years now. My first HOTAS was a TM FCS + WCS… Anybody else remember them?
My first joystick however, was one of these:
Now who’s showing their age
^^^ That’s it, that’s the one!
If I recall correctly, it was an upgrade from the standard Quickshot II in that it used microswitches rather than a flexible metal cross that bent to make a contact on the circuit board as you moved the stick. I remember that it was a problem that the arms of the metal cross could detach due to the constant flexing (sorry, I am not great at describing it)…
Hot Dog it! This is ehat happens when your old!!! Your friends are old. LoL
Can you say A-N-A-L-G-U-E boys and girls?
Two buttons! In that economy back then?!
Had the same stick and my dad retrofitted a second button sometime in the late eighties. It’s still hooked up to the Apple ][E in my parents study.
I hacked my Logitech Wingman into my first custom controller, it’s sitting in the back of my closest somewhere, and the Logitech Wingman 2 became a collective. I am debating dusting that off for interim use.
Those early Quickshot joysticks used to wear out really quickly, especially playing Daley Thomson’s decathlon.
My first stick….
To be fair to Commodore, it never broke. I must have had 4 Quickshot sticks before I upgraded to an Amiga and got a Competition Pro stick.
I had that too! Click, clickity clickclick!
I…actually painted mine light grey…!
I wonder… Have I ever owned a joystick that I didn’t modify, to some extent…?
It’s weird being the same age as old people…
ROFLMAO! I did and knowing nothing of “grounding” I caused a short that burned my 486 motherboard! 
I think it’s just in your DNA 
.
So you went from a virpil stick base to the moza, how does it compare for accuracy? do you feel less or equally accurate with it?
This was my first:
Never liked it but used it a TON.
Those of you who had the CH stick with FOUR buttons and a HAT were lucky. My first PC stick:
Two buttons and a wheel for throttle.
The TM FCS was my first stick that actually looked like something! A Phantom stick! Ooooh!
My first HOTAS was the TM TQS for the throttle
And I forget the name of their stick it came with, it looked like the Cougar stick but was all plastic as opposed to mixed metal. Bob Church sent me his chip kit so I could turn it into USB and make it programmable like the F-22 (which I didn’t get). I did get the Cougar and used that for many years as well.
I skipped the Warthog though. I got the Logi G940 FFB set when it came out in 2009 and was THRILLED with FFB that I had only so far had at my friend’s house with his MS FFB stick.
Used it for a long time, the stick was awesome, the throttle meh, and the pedals awful. When the handle became goopy sticky degraded rubberized plastic I dumped it for the X-56 which lasted me till I got my WW stuff.
I wish WW used same interface as TM so I could use any FF base with their grips, but I guess I will need to wait for theirs and hope it’s not the monstrosity the ones that I’ve seen so far from Moza and such are. I don’t think I can put a base that big on my chair mount (will never have room for a pit so I have left and right side mounts).
I got that Cougar next.