Questions about joysticks

[Vorondil]

I am also using a Logitech Extreme 3D Pro, and can recommend it as a starter joystick.

It features, aside from the primary two axises and fire trigger, Twist-stick Rudder, a Throttle Lever, 8-directional POV-hat, 5 thumb buttons on the stick and 6 buttons on the base. It costs about 350SEK here, which equals 54 Canadian Dollars.
Its electronics are not as durable as a more expensive joystick, as mine started giving somewhat mildly unstable signals around the center-regions after about 12 months of heavy usage. This can however be negated by using a little bit of dead-band.

Some other side notes; After you've acquired any joystick, you should do two things.
1.) From the Main Menu in IL2, go to Hardware and then Input and select Yaw from the drop-down menu. That is by default configured to a profile with all sliders set to 100. Drag the sliders (or enter the numbers in the boxes) until it's set to 10-20-30-40-...-100. This will make the Rudder less sensitive to input near the center, and will make landings and take-offs less dangerously sensitive/twitchy.
2.) Download the program "Joy To Key" from here and use it to configure your POV-hat inputs to simulate mouse movement. This will enable you to use your POV-hat to pan and scan smoothly across the horizon, instead of IL2's default ≈30° snap locks. (Don't forget to unbind the POV-inputs from the "views" and "snap view" sections of IL2's Control Settings.)