Thrustmaster TCA Yoke Pack - Boeing Edition: The FSElite Review

back in september at flight sim expo fs elite was privileged to get hands-on with the thrustmaster tca boeing pack and share some of the first photos and videos the world had seen now a few months later we've come full circle as this yoke and throttle are now sitting in my office [Music] hello everyone patrick here and today i will be reviewing the tca yoke pack boeing edition compatible with pc and xbox thrustmaster also threw in an additional throttle quadrant allowing us to get the full experience using two together before we get started i think it's important you know my background i am not a licensed pilot in fact the only aircraft i've flown in the real world was a stick based sgs 233 glider but i have tried and owned just about every yoke on the market today from ch to scitec logitech honeycomb virtual fly and others so i have a pretty wide range of knowledge in how the various flight simulation yokes feel and operate for the first time ever boeing has officially licensed a consumer flight simulation peripheral now this does not mean you can add it to a trainer and log hours like an faa certified yoke but it does allow a company like thrustmaster to produce a one-to-one scale yoke depicting the one found in 787 dreamliners is it truly one-to-one they claim so it's just difficult to verify without the real measurements the yoke measures 11 inches down the center and 12 inches from the top where the buttons stick out a boeing 737 yoke is about 13 inches and the 787 yoke appears slightly smaller judging from photos it's entirely possible 12 inches is accurate the throttle and spoiler range look like they could be accurate too but the flaps on the 787 extend further and the handles overall are much larger in height from the nice box art to the contents inside the box this tca pack was very easy and straightforward to unpack the yoke itself is all together in one piece minus the usb cable and a clip you can add to hold charts tablet or phone the throttle does require some assembly especially if you plan on tethering two together if you only have one throttle you can go straight into screwing in the mounting clamp but since we have two throttles we need to unscrew two brackets from the bottom of the throttle they do provide a small allen wrench like screwdriver for this but i found it doesn't have enough torque to turn the screws instead i used a regular phillips screwdriver which removed the screws with ease after that you can place the brackets to join the two throttles together now we just need to add the clamp down the center and it's ready to go on your desk the last thing we need to do is configure the spoilers flaps and throttle arms if you're only using one quadrant you have a couple of options one is you use the two provided throttle arms and then have to decide if you want the last axis as the spoilers or flaps most likely your choice will be flaps as it's the more crucial component for takeoff and landing or you go with one throttle in the center so you can have both spoilers and flaps on the quadrant if you do go with the two throttles and flaps you can use the yoke's bottom axes for spoilers or flaps i just really wish the design of this throttle had included one more axis for a total of four this would have looked great and completely eliminated the desire for two throttle quadrants unless you are interested in a boeing 747 style setup while we're on the topic of two throttles they almost didn't fit alongside the yoke because i have a corner desk this is something to consider if you're thinking of getting two one would be ideal for a desk like mine but luckily the yolk ended up having enough clearance without hitting the throttle next we're going to talk about the buttons and features of this pack the exterior of the yoke uses a matte black colored plastic inside the yoke is built on a metal frame and weighs about 3.6 kilograms or 8 pounds in total for perspective the logitech yoke weighs 1.4 kilograms or 3.1 pounds the oak has 18 buttons and 6 axes starting from the left you have five button inputs an eight point hat switch and one button on the back side on the right five buttons and one on the back as well also instead of a hat switch there is a mini control stick which is nice to have not only for scrolling through a menu but freely panning the camera view around moving down we have three buttons for view menu and sharing or anything you want to mount them to the base of the yoke has two sliding axes a button to power on the xbox and a landing gear lever the landing gear is a two point switch and it does require some force to move the switch is without indicator lights and simply puts the gear up or down as you can see a few of the buttons do have the xyab labels from the xbox controller i know some of you will not like seeing this it's too late for the current units but the only solution i can think of is leaving these optional and include stickers should anyone want to add them the yolk appears to have a clamp here at the top but it's just part of the mold with no hinge or way to hold the thinnest of paper it's kind of a shame because it would have been nice to have for clipping a charter checklist flights and yolks typically don't have working clamps so it would have set it apart from others in that way one nice feature they added was a 3.35 audio jack on the left of the yoke i really appreciate the extra slack this gives me for my headphones which are normally stretched over to the audio jack on my computer the back side has a button to select if you're using pc or xbox and a usb port i tried plugging the throttle quads into this port but my computer would not recognize them i ended up just plugging the throttle directly into my usb hub along with the other one where it was recognized right away airliner versus small general aviation yokes handle differently mechanically ga planes use a straight and level system while the airliner yolks slightly tilt toward you as they are pulled unlike every other yoke on the market using a straight shaft this yoke uses a pivot penduler system to replicate the system used on boeing aircraft it's a pretty cool way to do it and it feels great i'm also pleased with how well the clamp holds the yoke to the desk when pulling i've had yolks in the past though mounted will still rise a little bit on the far end the default tension on this yoke does give you a sense of weight when moving it around if you want even more tension thrustmaster gives the option to adjust the springs if you want more two to four can be used and there is detailed instructions provided on how to do this the yoke has 150 degrees in total roll axis and uses hall effect sensors which generally do not wear out because they use a shaft and a magnet that never actually touched the sensor pulling and turning the yoke both give you 16 bits of precision which equals 65536 by 65536 counts per revolution this value is the measure of voltage converted to a digital value in other words it's able to break the travel range into 65 536 individual points this allows it to pick up some pretty fine movements all around the yoke instantly re-centers when letting go of the pitch and has a springy return to center on the roll moving on to the throttle which also takes advantage of the 3d hall effect sensors the two throttles together weigh 0.94 kilograms or 2 pounds on a single quad you have 3 axes and 17 action buttons in total five buttons on the face a knob for speed heading and altitude a second knob to control those values which also pushes in at the bottom there is a switch for those using two throttles this allows you to set which quad will be the one and two and three and four the throttle arms also have a button on the side which can be used to map take off go around auto throttle or whatever you please on the back you can also tether in a set of thrust mastered rudder pedals keep in mind the components inside these throttles are very much exposed to collecting dust you might want to find a way to keep the unit covered when not in use moving the throttle corner arms feels very smooth with a nice amount of tension it's important to note that reverse thrust levers are not on an axis but rather picked up as a button when clicked into place they do feel somewhat flimsy i think you could break them if you are careless and put downward tension on them for some reason they are plastic and about as thin as a popsicle stick when not in use they are not locked in a single position and do have some give to them so far we've covered the look feel and features so let's see how they do in the simulator i tested these units with microsoft flight simulator x-plane 11 and prepared version 5.2 each sim gave me a slightly different experience and functionality mainly due to each sims method for using certain controls overall i had the least headache when setting them up in x-plane 11 so we'll start there each sim recognized the tca yoke and each throttle quadrant separately x-plane 11 was great because nothing was mapped when i started out this might sound like the opposite of what you want but there's nothing worse when a sim guesses the mappings you want this leads to many things often dual map then a real mess to clean up especially when dealing with this many buttons across three units starting with the yoke i mapped the roll pitch elevator trim and landing gear next was the spoilers throttle one and my personal choice of using the side button for toga the reverse thrust map to hold reverse thrust at max i also mapped the knob at the bottom to control the altitude bug next was the second quadrant which i'm using for throttle 2 flaps and the knob at the bottom for heading control i later swapped these bugs around to be in sequence with the mcp with the controls set up to my liking i loaded in at san francisco international airport using the legendary zebo mod 737. until we start seeing aircraft like the pmd g737 on microsoft flight simulator this is going to be the best test to run using these controls i entered the runway set the throttle to 40 n1 engaged toga and i was off 80 knots v1 rotate this felt as smooth as can be i really like this pivot system for the airliners it's the first time i've gotten to try one actually in a simulator like this landing gear came up and i started to work with the trim then beginning to turn to the right and leveling off at three thousand feet one thousand thousand to go twenty five hundred they're heading and altitude knobs also worked as i vectored myself back to the ils approach for runway 28 right as i headed down the glide path i had a chance to use some spoilers for drag i started to put the flaps out on schedule and disengaging the autopilot and auto throttle with the yoke in one hand and the throttle in the other the aircraft is nicely heading down the glide path under my control for being my first landing with these controls and not using a yoke for a couple of months it felt like i had been using them for months i thought they might have a learning curve but i felt right at home with them 500. 400 300 approaching minimums 200 minimums 100. now crossing the runway threshold i close the throttle and we're aiming for the center line holding that flare now grabbing the reverse thrust and pulling it towards me they come out on a slight delay because this is a button mapping but overall i was pleased with how my first flight went i can't wait till i truly get used to them if that's even possible beyond they moving on to other sims i decided to give prepared 5.2 a chance i had to remove some dual mappings and reverse the spoilers and flaps but nothing too major i tested the controls in the tfdi 717 starting with the yoke spoilers flaps and throttle everything worked as intended where i started to run into issues was with the reverse thrust again because this lever is actually a button p3d doesn't allow you to hold reverse thrust at max at least not with the built-in menu instead they have a mapping called throttle decrease quickly this activates the reverse thrust in increments this means when pulling the reverse thrust arms back you only get idle reverse it would take about seven up and down pushes of this lever to get full reverse and that's just not going to cut it this is an issue i've had with p3d dating back to my use of the logitech throttles but you can map a reverse thrust axis so i used the open arm to the left of the number one engine to do this not ideal but it did work for what i needed when it comes to using the knobs for heading in altitude i could not get them to work when mapping autopilot altitude bug decrement and increment were not working very possible the button mapping program fsuipc can fix this but when using the core p3d button mapping interface i could not figure it out moving on to microsoft my experience wasn't exactly plug and play i figured since this product was inspired by this sim it would be a little more ready to go i still needed to reverse some axes and remove conflicting axes i didn't want again i ran into trouble with the reverse thrust x-plane was the only sim where this worked right away in microsoft flight simulator you have two options for this command hold throttle reverse thrust and toggle throttle reverse thrust hold throttle reverse thrust is supposed to hold the reverse thrust at max but i could not get the reverse thrust to budge no matter which throttle or button i mapped it to toggle throttle reverse thrust toggles the reverse thrust on and allows your normal throttle inputs to control the in-sim reverse levers i got this to partially work most of the time sometimes one throttle would activate and sometimes both either way it was buggy the throttles click and snap up and down very fast as if something is forcing them in the other direction i triple checked to make sure i didn't have any conflicting mappings across the three units including my rudder pedals now obviously this is more of a microsoft flight simulator problem rather than a thrust master problem it did after all work fine in x-plane 11. this is also a symptom of not being able to use an axis to control these arms i just thought this setup would have worked a little more flawlessly considering it's designed with microsoft flight simulator in mind also remember i'm testing this on the pc version it's very possible the xbox might handle things differently this is also something that may not be an issue anymore by the time you hear it from me with all the controls sorted at best i took the 787 for a short flight this aircraft is still incomplete and has its quirks but as i said when pmdg arrives it will be a nice treat to pair this set with this time without the use of toga i got to experience the full range on the throttle as i added power it's a nice range to have rotation felt great the gear lever functioned as did the flaps and trim this is the first flight where i got to try the mini stick on the right side of the yoke and i have to say i really like having it there it's much nicer than the traditional hat switch look which forces a hard turn to the left or right with the stick i could slowly control my view all around the cockpit everything i've shown you today the tca yoke pack and additional throttle totals 650 dollars before taxes and 697 dollars after taxes when living in california after getting to use this yoke with my favorite sims i'd be lying if i said i didn't love using it i liked it so much i'm considering setting it up as my primary yoke for airliner flying and i didn't think i would feel this way going into this review the throttle is nice for what it is i like the size of the handles and it was very comfortable to use but it wasn't really anything special in my opinion especially as a single unit it really needed that fourth axis along with the reverse thrust arms to impress me further also not having the throttle lowers the cost a little the standalone yoke will be available for pre-order in february 2022 thrustmaster is listing it with a suggested retail price of 400 the worth and value all depend on what you're looking for this is the only yoke on the consumer market that moves like an airliner yoke with some pretty good sensors too without the throttle you still have everything you need at a minimum you can map the trim to the left flaps on the right and you have an axis for the throttle spoilers or flaps with all of that you still have the landing gear lever and many buttons left over to map if you really need a throttle or you're a collector of boeing memorabilia you will enjoy having the throttle too but my biggest takeaway from this review is that the yolk really is awesome the feel of the pendular system adjustable springs for the tension a mini control stick for the camera and a headphone jack were all features i didn't know i wanted until i had them in front of me this reminded me of a great steve jobs quote some people say give the customer what they want but that's not my approach our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do i truly look forward to using this setup for the coming years now if you'll excuse me i have some flying to do

Channel: FSElite

Views: 169,869

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Id: glz9lb1k4hA

Length: 21min 25sec (1285 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 04 2021