I wanted to share the flight sim setup that's in the background of many of my other videos, while not a 1:1 rendition of the aircraft I fly, it's got enough physical controls to match all of the emergency procedures and almost all of the everyday procedures I need to do while flyiing. I set it up with a sidestick, throttle and pedals, a pair of flight sim panels that provide switches, displays and rotary controls. And finally a pair of displays running on a laptop and iPad to simulate the glass panel.
All in all this is just under $600 in new hardware, since I run the displays on hardware that used for other tasks. So that's a few hours of flight time in the real thing, it'll never replicate the feel of real controls, but it can familiarize me with procedures, communication and terrain so that when I do it for real I can be focussed on learning the actual flying part.
For the ATC comms I use Pilot Edge which is a subscription service that offers guaranteed service during operating hours, and a little more room to make mistakes.
www.pilotedge.net
If you are interested in building out your own cockpit, for learning I can't recommend the Logitech Flight Yoke, it's low cost for sure, but it's very sticky, making small adjustments in pitch hard to dial in. I hear the Honeycomb yokes are such better and they incorporate some switches which is nice since I had to buy those on a separate panel.
If you already have a stick or even a throttle then I'd put rudder pedals as a higher priority, since getting rudder practice is more important than more realistic controls.
Follow me on Twitter for more updates:
DJSnM
I have a discord server where I regularly turn up:
discord.gg/zStmKbM
If you really like what I do you can support me directly through Patreon
www.patreon.com/scottmanley