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first quality joystick was Microsoft's Sidewinder Force Feedback Pro
and I think I bought it when force-feedback first hit the market. In the
years since, I have looked longingly at Precision Flight Controls
advertisements in my favorite flightsim magazines and wondered what it
would be like to someday replace the old Feedback Pro. It dawned on me
that since I spend between five and fifteen hours a week flying, I told my
wife that spending discretionary income on peripherals was a perfectly
rational thing to do. A deal was struck (it involves heavy yard work) and
I began searching PFC's web site for information and FlightSim.Com for
previous reviews on their product line. I eventually chose to buy from
Precision Flight Controls because of excellent reviews and, in the years
to come, if I ever wanted to build a serious cockpit I would have some of
the best warranted and supported equipment available. For now though, my
new peripherals fit nicely as part of my desk in the living room and yet
give me a serious feel of flying.The day came when I finally took delivery of my new Jetliner Pedestal Yoke with fitted Cirrus pedals, a Digital Throttle Console, a 4 engine throttle quadrant, and the King Air style turboprop throttle quadrant. I was really pleased to find a schematic on how and where to plug everything in, customized to the peripherals I'd bought. Preparing the hard drive was a simple matter of executing PFC's driver system which installs their PFC.DLL file and a newer version of FSUIPC.DLL from the provided CD. (As a side note, while their incredible looking side console system was not part of my shopping spree, I was motivated to build a small wood floor stand that the throttle console fits into nicely, and therefore places the throttle system to the right of my chair as from a captain's perspective.)
I've since updated to FS2002 when PFC made their newest drivers available
for this version. The
Cirrus rudder pedals and several
yoke systems have been reviewed here at FlightSim.Com over the years
so I'm going to focus on the Digital Throttle Console and the two throttle
quadrants that I purchased. I will say however that I do not miss force
feedback at all... I've since been reintroduced to the sounds of flight
simulator to tell me my wheels are on the ground, and the pedals and yoke
provide excellent resistance for realism.
Having used the keyboard or a single slide as a throttle all these years, I could not imagine what it would be like to finally have totally separate engine controls, be it jet or prop. With the jets, forget about the TO/GA button as you'll want to hand fly your aircraft to 10,000 feet! And, taxiing heavy iron is much easier when you can so easily use a combination of left brake and right engine in a tight left turn.
Shown is the four engine jet throttle quadrant which is one of two I
purchased. The white lever at left is your airbrakes marked for
up-armed-deployed while the right white lever activates reverse thrust and
adds power as you move the lever down. I had a concern about flying
twinjets with this system and while it does certainly work (on a 737 for
instance, throttle lever #1 and #2 control the aircraft's two engines)
I've grabbed the wrong levers more than once and just kept right on going
instead of decelerating for a flare and landing. Purchasing the proper
quadrants for you favorite aircraft is recommended which reminds me to
write that letter to Santa... There are over a dozen quadrants available
for most any small or large, jet or prop aircraft so matching things up is
easy and precise.
While there is a gear lever and flap switch on the Digital Console, removing two thumbscrews is all it takes to remove the jet quadrant and set up the turboprop (or any other) quadrant and then load up your favorite applicable aircraft while the PFC.DLL automatically switches software assignments. The turbo quadrant has independent throttles with detents for going from idle to reverse, prop condition levers with detents for full feathering, and fuel levers with detents at cut-off.
For such a nice aircraft as the King Air 350, I was in a rut and just
unmotivated to fly her until now. Boy, did I quickly learn which gauges
are affected by throttle and which by prop condition! Climbing through
2000 feet AGL you'll want to cut back on the power to protect those power
plants, then the key here is to match settings for throttle and condition
on two engines. Friends, therein lies one of the biggest benefits to
independent throttling, and that is sound! Oh how sweet it is to hear
even a slight difference in throttle or pitch and then bring those two
engines to purr as they should by listening, watching the gauges, and
making oh-so-slight adjustments to the levers. Even the jets give you an
audible difference in pitch and on a 747 with four out-of-tune engines;
you'd swear there's a beehive in the hold below.
Worth saving up for? I'm taking out 13 pine trees, grinding the stumps, and hauling the logs for this one! Is this a perfect product? It is very close to it. While the quality is superb and the layout and function very well thought out, the only difficult part I found is trying to calibrate the throttles. Accomplished using the PFC.DLL interface, I just cannot seem to get the hang of it and I should go back and read the instructions, from the set-up CD, a second time. However, I've had no motivation to get it right as it's just too nice to manually adjust slightly out-of-tune throttles.
John Stanton
Visit Precision Flight Controls
fishkayaks@aol.com