Let $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}_{1},\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}_{2}>1$ and $T_{i}(x,y)=((x+i)/\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}_{1},(y+i)/\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}_{2}),i\in \{\pm 1\}$ . Let $A:=A_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}_{1},\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}_{2}}$ be the unique compact set satisfying $A=T_{1}(A)\cup T_{-1}(A)$ . In this paper, we give a detailed analysis of $A$ and the parameters $(\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}_{1},\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}_{2})$ where $A$ satisfies various topological properties. In particular, we show that if $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}_{1}<\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}_{2}<1.202$ , then $A$ has a non-empty interior, thus significantly improving the bound from Dajani et al [Self-affine sets with positive Lebesgue measure. Indag. Math. (N.S.)25 (2014), 774–784]. In the opposite direction, we prove that the connectedness locus for this family studied in Solomyak [Connectedness locus for pairs of affine maps and zeros of power series. Preprint, 2014, arXiv:1407.2563] is not simply connected. We prove that the set of points of $A$ which have a unique address has positive Hausdorff dimension for all $(\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}_{1},\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}_{2})$ . Finally, we investigate simultaneous $(\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}_{1},\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}_{2})$ -expansions of reals, which were the initial motivation for studying this family in Güntürk [Simultaneous and hybrid beta-encodings. Information Sciences and Systems, 2008. CISS 2008. 42nd Annual Conference 2008, pp. 743–748].