Spin the stick around and you see the side LB and RB controls, a very sturdy throttle control, which at first I though was a bit stiff to use, but after using it for a while, I realised its designed to make slow and small adjustments to the power output with a higher degree of accuracy. Lastly on the base unit you see the D-Pad, a fairly sturdy one too, with it’s directions raised above the body of the base making it easy for your thumb to find without taking your eyes off the screen.
One of the most impressive thing about the F.L.Y.9 flight stick is its customisation options, just about ever major component can be raised, twisted and tweaked to your liking. After taking the stick out of the box, pretty much nothing about it fitted my hand, I have quite big flat hands and long fingers, so I had to spend a couple of minutes tweaking the setup, the first part of which wasn’t too difficult, just pressing in the locking mechanism on the side of the flight stick allowed me to adjust its length, with very helpful printed measurements on the stick to assist with the calibration.
There is a very handy tool tucked away in the base of the unit too, which is basically just an allen key, but its nice that its included. This tool allows you to tap into several extra adjustments that let you tweak the angle of the stick and tilt the hat switch / thumb controls. After a couple of attempts and minor tweaks I had a setup that fitted my hand perfectly, which made the stick easier to use and means there would be less chance of my hand feeling fatigued from using it. Overall setup and tweaking took me about five minutes before I was ready to play a game, which isn’t too bad as I only needed to set it up once.
