Personally, I think trackir is the greatest thing to come along since the mouse. Ok, that may be overdoing this a bit but not by much.
I have always hated using a POV hat. At the end of a long night, my thumb would be raw. I tried using padlock views and would always get disoriented. I gave up on that long ago. It took me no time at all to get adjusted to TIR. In fact, after using it a while, your senses get so "fooled" that you really get the feeling you are looking around. AH is one of the few games that takes advantage of the six degrees of freedom (6DOF) of the TIR4 which in addition to looking up/down, left/right, you can tilt your head, move your head left/right, raise/lower your head, and move closer/farther from the monitor. You can actually look around the struts in the cockpit. It is a very "3D" type sensation.
I bought my TIR4 from gogamer.com for $179 which came with a copy of Falcon4/AF which I was willing to pay $39 for at the time. I've heard people say you can find it for $149 or so but since I'm no longer in the market, I can't say for sure.
It's worth it. It really is. It works great with AH too.