Thrustmaster TCA Officer Pack Airbus Edition

I first ordered the Thrustmaster TCA Officer Pack Airbus Edition last year, when the idea of flying away from everything was even more attractive than it is right now. I’d taken the precaution of ordering in good time, which I thought was a great idea, particularly when I saw the price of joysticks go through the roof. Unfortunately, the people selling me my joystick were also watching these prices. Their claims about my order status became more and more outlandish, at one point the order was marked as despatched, but then they cancelled it completely.

So that was that for a while. But, ever persistent, a few weeks ago I noticed that Scan computers were claiming to have them in stock. I thought I’d test these claims, and today the joystick arrived. Just in time for our Monday evening flying session.

It is very nice. Not the real thing of course, but good enough for me. It works beautifully with Microsoft Flight Simulator. The joystick response is very smooth and there is plenty of movement in the throttle. It even has nifty reverse thrust settings which you can use to stop your Airbus from plummeting off the end of runways that turn out to be a lot shorter than you expected.

I never had many plans for my long term future, but one of the one that I was pretty sure would come to pass is that I would always be playing with silly plastic toys. And so it has turned out.