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GoFlight: GF-MCP PRO


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Every once in a while an add-on comes along that makes you say WOW, this has only happened a couple of times with me, the Track IR was one and the UK photo scenery for xPlane another. There have been others but I am not going to write about them. I am going to write about the Go Flight GF-MCP Pro. I first saw one of these some years back at a VATSIM live event here in the UK. One of the pilots at the event was flying his LevelD 767 (yes in the other sim) and he had a GoFlight MCP connected.

 

I watched him flying for about half a day before plucking up the courage to ask if I could have a go on his sim. Well he let me and all I could say was WOW. It was amazing to turn the knobs and press buttons and flick switches and it work in the sim.

 

From that moment on I was hooked and so very much wanted one that I decided to get one. It took me several years before I did buy one but in May of this year at the FSC Weston Flight Sim show, I bought one off my good friend Bob Sidwick of RC Simulations.  I had to be persuaded that it would work with xPlane before parting with my hard earned cash, but Bob assured me that it would.

 

I got back from FSC with a box with the MCP rushing to my Man Cave (study/sim pit) to install it. Surprisingly there is very little in the box the unit itself a bag of screws and two end plates you also get an Allen key and once you have fitted the endplates it becomes a self standing unit . Many home cockpit builders have used this unit as it looks and works so well.  There was also a USB cable but very little else. The unit is 16.25X2.7 inches and is made of high quality gauge steel and finished in  battleship grey.

 

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Installation is very easy but what is not explained with the documentation is that for the unit to work with xPlane one needs to get a plugin. It's a simple case of plugging the usb cable into the back of the unit and then into a spare usb socket on your PC and the unit will light up and its installed.

 

Although the next bit is a little tricky and this is when you need to find the plugin that will make the MCP work with xPlane and your particular aircraft.If you go to Chris Strossers site http://caffeinatedaviator.com/ you will be able to download his excellent plug in XGoflight. Chris has been working with Goflight for just over a year now and has written the code that makes it work with XPlane. It supports a large number of aircraft such as

 

EADT – x737

ddenn – Challenger 300

Peter Hager – Airbus A380

FlyJSim – Boeing 727

FlyJSim – Q400

JARDesign – A320neo

JRollon – CRJ-200

VMAX – Boeing 777 Worldliner

X-Plane 10 – Boeing 747

It will even work with a number of GA aircraft, which is rather good fun to fly a GA with the MCP although not very realistic.

As with all plugins you simply download it to your hard drive and install it to your plugin folder in the xplane directory. Since I got my plugin there have been several updates by Chris regarding stability etc. You will need to download some Microsoft redistributable files but these are identified on the download page for you so its no hardship.

 

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This is the eadt x737 and as you can see working perfectly.

 

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The VMAXX Boeing triple 7, possibly the best large airliner for Xplane from Flight Factor.

 

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Boeing Dreamliner 787

 

Operation

 

I tend to fly the EADT x737 and the Ramzzess Boeing 777 Worldliner the most and I use the MCP all the time. When you load up your aircraft you will find in your plugin drop down menu an xgoflight item clicking on this gives you two options reload config and reload devices. Which is all rather obvious. I tend to always click on reload config just to make sure the correct config file is loaded with the aircraft.

 

For each aircraft you have to have a config file for the MCP to work correctly this is a painless process that Chris Strosser has made even easier as he has created a number of example config files which are on his site to download.

 

 

In terms of operation you use the physical MCP much as you would the virtual one in your aircraft with all knobs and buttons working as in the sim. As you can see from the images it is based very much on a 737 MCP so when using it in a Boeing it all seems so natural.  

 

It is rather expensive and I suppose one has to consider whether you wish to pay this amount of money for such an item. My view is it is a lot cheaper than a golf club membership so it works out at good value for money. You can buy them direct from GoFlight but there are a number of flight sim specialists that stock it, I bought mine from RC Simulations here in the UK who will ship to anywhere in the world. http://www.rcsimulations.co.uk

 

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This as I said at the beginning is one of those products that make you go WOW, all of my flights are done using this and it adds to the immersion by a factor of 10. I think it's money well spent and I will get years of use out of it. If I had one niggle that would be that the switches are a little loud when you use them, but it's no hardship. A friend of mine came around the other day and he just sat at my desk with a  look of awe on his face. he then took my 737 for a quick flight to Manchester. he landed and immediately bought one from Goflight. 

 

I highly recommend this product and if you are wondering what you should have for Christmas, well I would say you might just have found it.

 

Wycliffe Barrett

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  • 1 year later...

Does the GoFlight: GF-MCP PRO work with X-Plane 9? I'm working in a lab that uses X-Plane 9 for its simulations and there are a few custom plugins that were written for their sim. I don't want to update since I'll have to edit the custom plugins. I've tried installing the appropriate plugin from http://caffeinatedaviator.com/, and it doesn't work. The sim is done with a Learjet 45. Any help would be much appreciated. 

Abu. 

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