Since this is a rather complex package we will take a look at the different features one by one... finishing with the aircraft(s) and the panel.

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Documentation

The docs that come with Mad Dog 2000 include a very well written pilots handbook. The manual covers facts and instructions about most, if not all, of the systems and a demo flight for first time Mad Dog pilots. I really enjoyed reading the documentation and felt that I learnt what I wanted to know. Also included is a 'Panel Operations Manual' that guides you through all the procedures; I found this to be extremely helpful the first flights. Later on when you feel more confident as a MD skipper you can use the included checklists, printed on cardboard paper. The main docs, as well as the 'Panel Operations Manual', come in a plastic binder that feels quite durable.

Pushback

The pushback is great! I just love it. Sure there are some good freeware pushback utilities out there, but this one is really to my taste. From the LAGO part of the menu select pushback and enter preferred distance and direction.

The beauty of this is that it does not use slew mode, thus letting you here the engine sounds. If you wish to start the engines while pushing back, just click the LAGO menu and ask for clearance—mind you, the fellow who pushes you back will be really upset if you donīt get his permission before startup. One more quirk with the PB is that Matt, as our friendly ground crew guy is called, donīt always clear you for the pushback. Matt and the tow truck are visible, though not easy to spot when in normal cockpit view. You can have various opinions as to whether he is well painted or not, but it is pretty cool to actually see the truck and ground crew! Combine this with a good scenery such as German Airports and the airport environment is 100% thrilling! The pushback is available regardless of what you fly; since it is accessed from the menu you can call it up even if you are flying with the default MS Cessna (perhaps a poor example). Thatīs one thing I like about MadDog—the product goes a bit beyond just being a aircraft with a panel.

Test System Intel PIII 733 MHz ASUS Intel MB 133 Windows 98SE 256 Megs RAM ASUS GeForce 2 32meg 52X CD ROM Soundblaster 128PCI CH FS Yoke USB SAMTON 19" Monitor Flying Time: 8 hours over 8 days

Mark7 GPWS

The Ground Proximity Warning system will give you callouts during the approach and landing—good to have if you donīt want to stare at the altimeter for the flare! The voice is okay and it is a nice feature, although noting that makes me bounce up and down with excitement. As with the pushback, the GPWS can be used with other aircraft/panels than the Mad Dog package.

MD Traffic

Heard about FSTraffic? MD traffic gives you dynamic traffic consisting of MDs flying around at cruise altitude. This could surely be nice if you fly offline without ATC. You are alerted when there are any aircraft in the vicinity, so there should be a good chance you'll spot your virtual colleagues.

The Aircraft

With the Mad Dog package you will able to choose between MD82, 83, 87 and 88. You also get a wide selection of liveries to choice among: SAS, Iberia, Finnair, Alitalia, Aero Lloyd, AOM, Crossair, Edelweiss, Aviaco ¹ and even Air LAGO (must be a regional company, never heard of them...) is among the liveries included. So for European users the selection should be quite enough; however, you guys on the other side of the pond might be missing out on your favorite liveries.

AeroLloyd	Air LAGO	Ailitalia	AOM
Aviaco	Crossair	Edelweiss	Finnair

SAS

Spanair

To be honest, the first wave of the birds included is a bit disappointing; the aircraft lack moving parts, and the textures designīt feel up to the latest standards. It really feels quite like the old FS98 models with some FS2000 tuning. There are also some errors in the design, such as the fan blades being placed to far inside the engine intake. The flight dynamics are okay, but not great. I believe that most simmers will find that the best solution to this is to simply replace the included planes with other freeware MDs. Personally I have picked my favorite VA bird from SVA, and there should be a very exciting selection coming from the good folks over at Project Freeware.

The Panel

This is the most exciting part. I have chosen only to review the Expert panel—Mad Dog also comes with a simplified "standard" panel; its operation is similar to the default Flightsim 2000 Boeing 737 panel.

The Mad Dog panel bitmap is nothing to get to excited about; actually it looks quite "plotty" and does not compare to talented paint works such as Eric Ernst's 767, the RCS DC-3 or the PSS 777. I did not expect to find any update of the bitmap for the FS2000 version, but it wouldn't have done any harm...

The lacks in the artistic front are somewhat compensated by the gauges—especially the autopilot and the overhead. The best way to describe this extremely complex panel is by letting you see some screenshots:

The autopilot annunciator. This displays the current AP settings and also any alerts.

The PAX generator, actually more fun then it sounds!

The on screen speed sheet. The data is changed relative to your TO weight!

From top left; standby horizon, thrust rating, fuel totalizer, primary engine instruments and sec. engine instruments. Also shown is the flaps indicator.

The autopilot panel, or as the real name is; FGP, Flight Guidance Panel. Note the IAS and EPR buttons. You will not find these on many other panels. Using these in conjunctions enables EPR limited IAS climb.

The overhead, here you will find the power busses, APU controls, fuel selectors, engine starters and ignition. Also on the overhead is the pax signs and anti-icing switches. The overhead is a bit to oversimplified in my opinion.

So, what does the panel offer? Starting from the top and down you will get almost all you could ask for. On the overhead you will find the controls for your aircraft's electrical system, and the APU and ground power are accessed from here. I have had some problems with all electric power disappearing even with the APU running; I don´t know if one should blame LAGO or Microsoft for this, but is a bit frustrating. Also on the overhead are the engine starters as well as the fuel pump selectors. One nice touch is the PSI gauge that measures the air pressure for the engine starters. Try and start the engine with the air conditioner on.

Further down on the glareshield you will find the autopilot, or FGP-Flight Guidance Panel as it is called in 'Mad Dog' language. The FGP is the best part of the Mad Dog panels! Some of the most fun features is the option to use IAS climb with EPR controlled via the thrust rating panel (more on that later). IAS climb is basically a mode that lets the aircraft climb as much as possible at a given airspeed. Let´s say that you have set the IAS climb to 300kias. If the powerplant is producing more power than needed to maintain 300 knots the IAS hold mode will pitch the aircraft up until it maintains 300 knots. If you would put the throttles back to idle in this mode, the aircraft would pitch down until the set 300 knots is maintained. This is the mode that real pilots use—the old FS vertical speed is simply too dangerous. If you set the aircraft to climb with 2500 feet per minute and let your mind wonder or fetch a cup of coffee there is a big risk of the aircraft stalling for you. Why? Simply because all the autopilot takes into the calculation is to climb with 2500 feet per minute. If the powerplants do not produce enough power to climb at your set speed, the AP will continue to pitch up without any concern of the speed. A stall in a MD, for instance, is a disaster; the chance of surviving is about zero... The autopilot can also land your aircraft, or should be able to. I have found that the AP has a tendency to line up half a 'dot' aside of the localizer, regardless of air file and weather. This is frustrating—with such a fine autopilot I would like to be able to shoot perfect ILS approaches!

Onto the PFD (Primary Flight Display) and ND (Navigation Display). These instruments here are made pretty basic. The PFD is pretty good with a nice backround light at night. However the flight director seems to show some errors in the pitch; if I follow it I will not get a correct climb profile (too fast). The ND is ok with the essentials plus ILS/VOR identifications and DME for both Nav 1 and 2. However the graphics feels very plotty and not up to date. And it would be nice to have a option to choose ARC mode.

On final

Nightlight

At night, no light on

The airspeed indicator is great! If you look at the screenshots above you can see the speed bugs; these are set automatically and correct in regard to your current weight—good job!

The fuel gauge is another nice thing; it displays your current weight, fuel included. There are instructions as to how to adjust it if you choose to fly with an air file other than the original one. A small but good function is the hydraulic pumps—learn how to operate them or you will have some big problems!

A rare gauge is the 'Thrust Rating Computer', TRC. This device gives you the correct EPR (engine power) setting in Takeoff, Climb, Cruise and Go around. There are even two different modes (actually three, one of them has a sub-mode) for takeoff. The TRC seems to work very well, and is a nice realism adding feature. The TRC gives the above mentioned IAS climb the correct engine power setting for each stage of the flight.

The engine instruments and the rest of the gauges are well made; no remarks whatsoever are necessary here! Many of the gauges have different sounds connected to them, and most of them are ok but some are hard to hear.

As I believe that this panel deserves some extra attention I asked SAS DC-9 captain Stellan Hilmerby take it for a test flight. Stellan has logged approximately 1000 hours in the MD80 previous to his assignment as DC-9 captain. Here is what Stellan has to say:

"I have made a couple of trips – ESSA (Stockholm Arlanda, Sweden) - ESGG (Gothenburg Landvetter, Sweden) and ESSA - ESNN (Sundsvall Midlanda, Sweden). In general everything seems to be very good. The Flight Guidance Panel is super! The feeling so far is ok, climb and descent is ok. The pitch is a bit sensitive but I have completed some manual approaches without any problems.

"The autopilot is very well done; it turns with 25-30 degrees, something that not many panels do. The ILS couple is okay, but it drifts on both glideslope and localizer. I like the small extras such as the speed bugs and the PAX loading/unloading—nice to have when you do your NAV planning.

"I am generally positive about this panel, but there are some remarks:

"FS2000 gives you the possibility to use nice side views; I think LAGO should have added internal side views for the MD.

"The main bitmap is the same as for FS98—there are some small graphic errors with transparency where there shouln´t be any. The entire top of the panel should be taken away; move the announciator to the overhead! The major impression is that you are seated in the middle of the cockpit, i.e., on the jump seat; the right window bar should lean a bit as well as the edge of the announciator.

"There are some illogical errors on the gauges as well: the APU power and the external power systems are not modeled correctly, but they are ok. The two minutes delay of the external power is ridiculous! When I fly I get the external power connected almost before I come to a stop—this is to save both the environment and the APU. The engine starter is much to fast; the spooling should be slowed down!

"The RMI (shows the direction to the VOR/NDB should display NAV1 and NAV2, not any NDB. The NDB can be viewed from the ND; the ND should have a expanded mode (ARC mode)—not only the rose mode. Also I would like to be able to turn of and on the NDB indication in the ND. In the real MD80 we had autobrakes—I miss them on this panel! The final glitch is the glideslope warning, it is too early.

"The flight dynamics and operations are the best part of Mad Dog, but if LAGO want´s my money I believe that the rest should be a bit better!"

To close the bag; Mad Dog 2000 edition is a must have. Might sound odd after all my nagging, but I really like this panel despite the shortcomings. There is a feeling that just can´t be explained, experience it! I would welcome a update from LAGO; give us some fresh graphics and I will be a happy simmer flying Mad Dog! Regarding the aircraft, well I don´t really think you need them—there are several other alternatives to get—but it´s nice to get them with the panel. The extra add-ons such as "Matt the pusher" are great!