Good MD-80 panel?

[Guest Dominik Mann]

I'm curious which of the many MD-80 panels available at flightsim.com and elsewhere might be the best and most appropriate for the SGAir MD-80. What confuses me most is that some of them are titled as "DC-9" panels, while others are titled as "Super 80" or "MD-80" panels, leaving me with no idea about which panel actually reflects the MD-80 instrument layout.Cheers,

[Guest]

The early MD-80 aircraft had a flight deck that was virtually identical to the DC-9 (afer all, the original designation was DC-9-80). The only real difference was the installation of a more modern MCP for the autopilot.Then at some point in the MD-80's life an EFIS flight deck was introduced, in fact it looks very similar in nature to the second generation 737 (ie the -300/400/500).Take a look at the pics of MD-80 flight decks at www.airliners.net and you'll have a pretty good idea what sort of configuration each airline used.As for FS panels, the only ones that are really worth having are Paul Golding's panels he developed for FS2000. His MD-80 panel is a good choice for the early MD-80 flight decks, and his MD-87 panel is good for the MD-80s with an EFIS flight deck. The only problem is these panels aren't 100% functional in FS2002. It doesn't look like Paul has the time to update them properly, so we have to make do with 3rd party modifications which remove the incompatible gauges and replace them with FS2002 compatible ones.