Okay, that was a lot of configuring time, but I was able to do a flight, C172 out of KSMO, toodle around for a bit, then land back at KSMO.
Setting up the autopilot almost solely to make it so I didn't have to keep guiding the plane to the left was really easy. Five way switch/knob at the upper left picks whether you're setting Altitude, Heading, VS, Course, or IAS. I will probably change that last one to do FLC instead. Pick the one you want, use the knob in the upper right to adjust away, then there are dedicated hardware buttons for all the usual autopilot suspects and an Auto Pilot button. And they light up when they're activated! The adjustment knob would only go in larger increments, I could only switch 1,000 feet at a time. I think that's a bug in FS2020 that I believe there's a workaround for, I have to go find that.
Didn't get a chance to try out the landing gear since the C172 has fixed gear.
Changing the configuration of the various levers is really easy, they just pop on and off. It comes with two boxes with fancypants magnetic sides, one with levers for propeller planes and the other with a set for jets. They feel like pretty lightweight cheap plastic but they mount really solidly to the unit, so once they're attached you don't really notice that at all. One of the two throttle levers for GA planes has a TO/GA button on the side of it that'll immediately engage full throttle, which explains why the mount points all have contacts on them. I'm curious to see if they do some more things with the levers in the future. Changing the configuration in FS2020 is a whole other story. You have to make a profile for each type of plane you want to fly and remember to change that profile every time you change planes. Not the end of the world, but it would be cool if FS could change that for you. That's really an FS thing though, not the hardware.
The annunciator lights are cool too - when I was still fiddling with things and often got dropped on the runway with my fuel mixture at full lean, a bunch of them would light up yelling at me about oil pressure and such. Only weird thing I saw was "ANTI-ICE" lit up for the C172, which seemed odd since it wasn't icy and also I don't think the C172 has any sort of de-icing functionality.
It also has 7 switches just under the autopilot buttons that are surprisingly hard to see in pictures. By default they're set to exterior lights, pitot heat, and the main avionics bus, but if you've got the Honeycomb yoke, it already has dedicated switches for all those except the pitot heat. You'll need to unset them if you have the yoke or else they'll fight over who's right and you'll never get the plane started.
I'm not used to having the trim wheel. I imagine over time I'll get a feeling for how much trim to dial in to get the result I want, for now I either didn't do nearly enough or I nearly pitched the plane into the ground. I really like having it there, though, and kinda wish there was a rudder trim one too. The yoke has those rudder trim switches though.
Anyway, I really like it so far. It feels really well put together, but I've only tried it on a plane with a single engine and no propeller pitch adjustment. I do need to figure out where I'm going to program the brakes to be though - I landed and suddenly realized I couldn't stop. I did manage to get my Clubsport pedals working as rudders and drifted the plane between two buildings trying to stop it but eventually crashed into another building.
