Hi everyone!My setup is coming up real well but is still pretty generic, I would like to specialize it to the MD80.My first question is: is there a simple way to interface real aircraft parts into my computer? The question is related especially to audio and electronic material like hand held microphones and real switches. Real aicraft mics and headsets have a bigger jack, is there anything such as a gender changer where you insert your aicraft audio jack and it comes out PC size? Or is there a more complicated problem related to powering the unit?My second question is if anyone knows if there are suppliers out there that build MD80 FMC/CDUs and MCPs on the style of Engravity for example. There are tons and tons of 737 and Airbus material out there, but nobody has ever thought of the poor Maddog ;)Thank you in advance!

To plug the real stuff directly to the pc will be impossible. I know a felow dutch builder who removed the inside parts of the real stuff and added servo/steppermotors to it to drive the frontplate/gauges.I do not know of any online tutorials about this.Perhaps you should read mikes book that he wrote about this and combine his work with real parts. Or the generic gauges of flightillusionhttp://www.flightillusion.com/gallery7.htmregards Norbert

For the headphones you can buy a special adapter that will allow you to use real headsets with your PC. http://www.pcaviator.com/shop/viewAProduct.php?pid=126As for real aircraft parts :-) Yes you can use and interface real aircraft parts.Not all parts but most can be interfaced. Robert Prather,Matt Ford,Rick Price, and alot of others have all successfully used real parts. You need to change your interface to Go flight, Epic, etc to get them to work. For the older type radio boxes (non led or lcd for the display)I dont think they can work and off the top of my head dont know anyone who has.Gary