I recently bought a Gametrix throttle.
It seems to be well made - it's solid and the tension on the left hand side has a noticable effect, varying the tension on the throttle from very stiff down to just about right. The lowest setting was fine for me, with age you might want to adjust it up.
The throttle has 4 buttons, a 4-way hat and two rotary controls. There is also a mode button that allows you to set up to 3 sets of bindings on the buttons. The rotary controls are not affected by the mode.
Each position of the 4-way hat is one binding, so with 3 modes that gives 3 sets of 8 bindings. The buttons are numbered from "Joy 1" up, so it seems that the first few bindings would of necessity overlap those of a joystick. I used it in combination with my Thrustmaster Hotas X joystick, and by not binding the 4-way hat in mode 1 (ie JOY 1 - 4) it worked fine as a combination.
It was automatically installed on connection and needs no extra software, and all the button bindings are recognised. It worked immediately with Elite, no problems at all. There is no preset configuration, so you need to bind everything custom.
The only thing I did not like is that it has no central detent or dead zone if the throttle is used full-range, which is what I prefer. So far, the only throttle that I know of that has this built in out of the box is the Thrustmaster HOTAS X.
Apart from that one issue, it's a fine device and I'd recommend it. Including shipping to Australia from the Netherlands mine cost AUS$128 (about 60 pounds). It took about 4 weeks to arrive and the payment had to be done by bank transfer.
They are still in stock at VKB
https://flightsimcontrols.com/store/available/gametrix-ecs-throttle/, and the matching Cobra joystick
https://flightsimcontrols.com/store/available/defender-cobra-m5-joystick-revb/ is now also back in stock. I assume it's button bindings work in a similar manner, so it is up to the user to pick and choose which modes and which bindings they configure for the two devices.
It's worth noting that the Cobra stick has twist yaw and a small built-in throttle , so as long as the know is sufficient for control you could conceivably use the stick as a stand alone controller.
Hope that helps.
