Some months ago I aquired a vintage flightstick/throttle combo from Thrustmaster at eBay. Both, the stick and throttle came in perfect (not to say unused) condition, complete with original box, manual driver disk and everything else that came with it back in the early 90s. The invoice dates the items August 1993.
The FCS was one of Thrustmaster's earliest flightsticks. It was a recreation of a stick one would find in older US-Fighter planes like the F-4 Phantom, even it was reduced somewhat in size. The stick was completely made of plastic, but the Pro version had a metal base that gave the stick a solid base on your desktop.
The WCS Mark II (Weapon Control System) was a fully programmable throttle. I had the WCS Mark I which was not programmable, but rather had some hardwired settings for the most popular sims at that time.
Anyway here are some pictures:
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| FCS pro & WCS Mark II |
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| FCS pro backside of box |
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| WCS backside of box. Notice the old school screen and the gameport connector) |
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| FCS in all it's beauty! |
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| Plaque at the base of the stick. |
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| ... and the throttle. |
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| Finally the manuals, ads and driver disk. Notice the F-22 on the WCS manual. When the manuals were printed, the maiden flight of the YF-22 was three years ago in August 1990. |
And finally the original invocie for the stuff ...
I'm not sure why the guy (who sold it on eBay some time ago) bought 2(!) of every item, stick, throttle and the pedals. Anyway, stick and throttle went for DM 343 (about 437 $US back in 1993).
Looks like "Aces over Europe" was included as a free gift.
I got them for EUR4,50 each a few month ago at eBay and will keep them. I still have an old Pentium I machine (with gameport) down in the basement. One day (when I'm retired) I will build a retro machine and set it up with the FCS/WCS combo ...
