Find the money, sell a kidney beg the wife or sell a child. You will be glad you did. ;)

My personal opinion is either use the hat switch ir use the mouse if you can get used to it. I use the mouse personally, and it works just fine.
One day I will invest in TrackIR, but for now I'm quite content.

TrackIR is fine and well, but what if you find out you don't enjoy the game or flight sims in general?

My advice is know what you're getting into before investing heavily into it.

The mouse works great, but it seems really difficult to move a hand to the mouse in the middle of a fight because you have to take your hand off the stick.

use your left hand for mouse, its a little bit tricky in the beginning but works as great as trackir after some practice. Still you have to jump around with your left hand for throttle, proppitch flaps and stuff. So i recommend trackir for maximum game experience.

There is only one important thing when you start flight sims and this is the joystick.

http://il2-diaries.blogspot.com/2011...-keyboard.html