HaHa! Funny Infinitestates. This is part 2. I want to say I'm writng this as a newcomer to flight sims on ANY system. I have no experience with flight sticks. This like a diary. It may help other players decide if they want a stick and what to buy.

I played 4 hours last night in training mode and campaign. All in sim. The more I play, the better it is. The stick is shaped really well and has a rest on the bottom that supports your hand. Very good fit. It is giving me what I wanted, a finer more precise control and ease of use. I particularly love the rudder. I'm using the stick twist left and right. I turn it slowly to get on target and hold it there while operating the other control surfaces. It works great! I am no longer swaying back and forth like my plane is on a rubber band. A vast improvement over the little thumb sticks on the gamepad. In a turn, the more I pull back on the stick, the tighter the turn. I get right in there on the edge of a blackout and hold the turn (depending on the plane type). Nice. I have figured out not to use the entire range of movement on the stick. Half to 3/4 will do. I am flying with full aerleron sensitivity and elevator 3-6 clicks down. The key is smooth moves. No slamming the stick like on the gamepad in arcade! The throttle has good range and will stay where you put it, at any percentage. Unfortunately this include WEP. All the way forward is WEP. You have to be careful not to leave it there or you'll burn up the engine and it will quit. But I have found the engine will take quite a bit of abuse from this with no ill effect, so it is no deal to me. So, the controls, with practise, are excellent. The button layouts are very easy to find and operate. No issues there.

Now the bad, but not so bad. The tophat has three functions. 1. Look around. 2. Issues orders to your wingmen. 3. Controls the gunner on bombers. Number 2 all you do is hold a button on the throttle and the tophat corresponds to the direction pad on the Sony controller. Easy. On look around, it can be a detriment. It is a camera that looks up, down, left, and right only. Push it in the desired direction, and the camera pans straight to the area. Anything in between looking forward and the area you go to can be missed as the camera is moving. You cant look exactly where you want. So far, I am dealing with this OK. I push the tophat repeatedly and quicky, say up. and I can maintain site on an oppnent moving. But I have not been online yet in a real dogfight either. Using in a bomber is also a little tricky. I didn't try this much but it was a little difficult to move the gun smoothly and follow an incoming fighter with it.

I'm finding I use the zoom a lot, both looking for targets and aiming at them from a distance, especially bombers. The button is located on the throttle in the front. Very easy to use. Zoom could be an issue for some people if you got used to having it and then losing it on a custom layout. I personnaly like it.

I don't undersatnd how you guys say you can't check your six with it. It doesn't quite go all the way back so you can stair at the back of your seat. You can't see back there anyway! I can't see shit behind me even using the gamepad so this has not been an issue for me yet. I found that by flying in a cricle and looking up I can scan quite a big area! This is what I was doing and a sharp eye will find the little dark spots. Keeping up with them after you spotted them is another story for another time.

I did well in practise finding the targets and downing some of them. It is definately superior to the gamepad in sim. In campaign, I defeated the dreaded Hornets Nest on the third try. That battle is at night and it is very diffucult to find the transports at all. The tophat gave me no problems. I defeated the entire Ciciliy invasion, including landing on my second attempt to rescue the downed pilot, in about 1 1/2 hours. Had some good kills, good bombing, and was finding targets pretty good.

The patch supposedly supports a mouse to use as a lookaround so I stopped at Best Buy on the way to work and picked uo a wireless mouse on clearence for $9.99. I discoverd last night that I fly for lapses without my left hand on the throttle as I am hunting targets. These are times when the Miller Lite is in the left hand! I'm goin to try the mouse tonight if I can figure out how to use it. Does anybody know? Just hook it into the 2nd USB port and go? Anyway, so far I like it a lot. I will report more after I get the mouse going and get online and test this thing in real sim combat.