Thrustmaster AVA F/A-18 Super Hornet flight stick review

For many moons now, the Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog has sat at the top of our best joysticks guide, staring down threateningly at the plastic-based options below. It's quite possibly one of the most substantial bits of hardware we've ever tested when it comes to build quality and delivers a substantial dose of realism—for a slightly eye-watering $550.

Thrustmaster has been beavering away on a new flight stick base design, however, and it calls it the AVA. That stands for Advanced Versatile Aviation, and it's essentially a modular base for Thrustmaster's future flight sticks. You can buy it as a separate unit, or you can choose to buy it as part of the AVA FA18 Super Hornet flight stick bundle, as I have in front of me here.

That gets you the fancy new AVA base, a 1:1 scale replica of the grip and stick controls from the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18C Hornet, an offset adapter, and a large baseplate to hold it stable on your desk. All told, the whole package will cost you $600/£500, which is no small amount of change—particularly when you factor in that it doesn't come with a dedicated throttle control, like the HOTAS Warthog.

Still, we'll get to that in a moment. What you'll notice most when pulling all of these components from their respective boxes is the sheer heft. The AVA base itself appears to have the density of a small star and feels something like holding a small, angular bowling ball. Looking at the engineering going on inside though, it's really no surprise. Everything about it seems immensely overbuilt both inside and out, which is a very promising start.

Type: Flight stick
Connectivity: USB Type-C to USB Type-A (cable included)
Controls: 1x eight-way POV hat, 2x four-way hats with push button, 1x metal two-step trigger, 4x push buttons, 1x two-way push button
Extra features: Adjustable base, included tools, spare springs for tension adjustment and cams for axis adjustment, base plate
Price: $600/£500 

Then there's the baseplate. It looks a bit like an oversized