I had a TCA Airbus controller for a couple of months now, and was contemplating matching it with the corresponding Throttle unit, but after reading all the reviews once people got their kits, I decided it wasn’t worth it. What convinced me is I really don’t fly the airliners and bizjets, I spend most of my time in Single-engine GA. So what I really needed was a throttle quadrant that at the minimum addressed physical controls of power, mixture, prop. Anything above that was a bonus.
I looked around and the Saitek/Logitech fit the bill to a T. Some came (briefly!) into availability late October, and while still above market rates, wasn’t as big a gouge as prices I’ve seen since summer.
The box is huge for such a small unit that maybe occupies 3x5" of my desk. I didn’t use the screw down mount, I can move it around and off easily when I need to use the space for work. The levers come with a complete pair of replacement heads in each color / designation, as well a single throttle handle if you want to configure all three levers to do the same function.
No need to load the Logitech drivers, Windows 10 USB game controller recognized it, and showed all axes and buttons properly working in full range. MSFS also recognized it automatically and assigned a default mapping. It also auto-mapped four out of the six buttons/switches (there’s nine if you count the bottom detent positions on each of the levers).
A quick remapping of the switches since some of them overlapped with the TCA, and we’re off to my first flight tests. It worked great. I was struggling to fine-tune power settings using the tiny (but convenient) slider on the TCA. Now I have a bigger and finer range which is great. It really cuts down the amount of time I spent mouse-looking to adjust the levers in-cockpit.
The hardware itself while plastic feels pretty robust, no creaks or fragile flexing. So far so good!
I just got my brand new TCA Officer pack Airbus edition. And I have to say I love it. But that’s because I fly almost exclusively with the A320 in the sim. I really love the realistic detents which took me 2 hours to play around the sensitivity to make sure the detents in the quadrant matches the detents in the sim. Once that’s set up. It feels really nice using it. But I can see why it’s kind of useless for single-engine GAs.
The only thing I regret from the thrustmaster is how fragile it is. I received mine and I find it’s lacking in the throttle resistance. So when I screwed the tension adjustment a little, the screw just breaks and the throttle is loose now. Far looser than when I pull it out the box. I know I’m stupid for doing it before I even set it up the first time. But at least the detents are there to keep my throttle in place. But if I remove the detents, there’s no way the throttle can hold position for any other aircraft like Boeing or GA.
I also have a Logitech X-56 that I use for everything else. but for Airbus, I’m using the thurstmaster.
My apologies to those who have replied to my query. I was looking for a thread referring to a yoke system and posted in this one by mistake. Thank anyway you to those who replied.
How does the twist rudder work for you? I have a Logitech X52 HOTAS and my twist Z-Axis rudder behaves like a button almost, full deflection left and right no matter how I set sensitivity. I’m trying to figure out how to fix it…
I tried to mess around again with it last night with no success. it’s bound to the correct axis “Rudder - Axis Z” but it continually jumps to either end of the line with the slightest twist. newest drivers from Logitech installed, plug unplug doesn’t seem to matter it just behaves like a button.
Hardware is fine because it behaves perfectly in Logitech and windows calibration tools. I know I’m binding it properly because currently I’ have in bound using a slide axis on my throttle to control the rudder with my thumb, it works pretty good, definitely better then violent jolts from left to right with the twist axis, but obviously not ideal.
Not sure what to do from here, get pedals I guess lol