In the life of every flight sim fan there are good days and bad days. The good days are when you meet your opponents head on, use up all your ordnance and turn for home plate, the glow of success lighting your face. Suddenly an unexpected adversary assails you out of the sun, but your tenacity and skill prevail again and you take him out with your last cannon rounds. You skid to a stop on the runway running on fumes. Ah!

But there are other kinds of good days, like installing new hardware! Anything that helps me fight better or improves my frame rate is GREAT hardware. Enter the Quickshot Masterpilot.

I confess that when I first saw the unit I fell in love. Even my cat clawing on my office door at 1 AM and then leaping from my book shelf onto my shoulder with all claws in landing configuration didn't deter my testing enthusiasm. (But I have volunteered the perpetrator for CIA experiments.)

Ya just gotta love anything that LOOKS like it came from a real cockpit, and the Quickshot Masterpilot fits the bill. Masquerading as an aircraft multi-funtion display it is in fact a keypad with slide-in sheets that inform you of the programmed function of each of its 26 buttons.

The device is surprisingly large, the width just greater than a 5 1/4" drive bay. It feels solid and can be set at one of two angles: almost straight upright or leaning back about 45 degrees. The buttons have a rubberized coating and there are rubber tabs on the points that contact your desktop to keep the unit from sliding around. The unit is one piece of very solid plastic that almost feels like metal. The MFD section is about 13 cm square.

Used to be that programming was done via a slide in cartridge system with specific games (75 or so) coded into it. With the cartridge inserted you press a button, select the code for the game you want to play (the number will be displayed on a 3 digit LED ) and presto! you're done. Fast and painless, and it comes complete with a setting allowing you to launch Windows 95 utilities.

The Masterpilot, much like the PC Dash or programmable HOTAS, plugs in line with the keyboard and enables you to chain several units together. If you already have a programmable stick and throttle I can't see the need of two of these units (nor would anyone have the desktop real estate) but if you lack the two sticks two of these devices would be great. In my case I hooked the unit in line with my HOTAS system and then loaded up Longbow II.

There is a certain sexiness to these devices, and if you wanted only to impress your flying buddies, the Masterpilot would do it. (Oh, your buddy flies a REAL F18... ok, don't bother....) The command card supplied with the unit was actually designed for the original Longbow and gave me a few errors while lacking some of the newer commands, but it did give me a good overview of the units functionality. The Masterpilot also comes with command cards pre-programmed for these sims:

• Aces over Europe
• Aces of the Pacific
• AH 64D Longbow
• ATF
• Back to Baghdad
• Comanche 2
• Dawn Patrol
• EF2000
• Falcon 3
• F22 Lightning II
• Fighter Duel
• Flight Simulator
• Flight Unlimited
• Hind
• Jet Fighter III
• Silent Thunder
• Su 27
• Top Gun
• USNF 97
• Wings of Glory

Why such a short list? The Masterpilot has more flexibility than the list above would indicate, so read on!

The Masterpilot also has a throttle lever. If you happen to lack a separate throttle stick this one is the next best thing, much better than the throttle wheels provided on most sticks as an extra function. And if you already have a throttle you can program this lever to cycle some other function like radar range.

The function of the unit itself is quite logical. There are five buttons along the bottom, each of which has an LED beneath it. The LEDs are colored, three red, one yellow and one green. The buttons along the bottom are labelled (from left to right): VIEWS OUT, VIEWS IN, WINGMAN, RADAR/TARGET, and WEAPONS.

Two buttons above these five, a grey button on the left and a red on the right, are respectively labelled PAUSE and EJECT. A single grey button to the right of and on the same level as the five black buttons is labelled GAME SELECT. Pressing this button clears the display, allowing you to select another program.

The good news is that Quickshot made the unit programmable, which means that custom layouts are now abounding! With twenty four buttons ringing the unit and five shift buttons along the bottom this unit has a total capacity of about 130 commands, so it will keep even the most complicated systems in the air! The software with the programmer runs under WIN95/98 (see below).

What I discovered when programming the PC Dash was that I wanted only certain command sets in my DASH, and other commands I wanted for my HOTAS so that I could keep my eyes on the fight. I programmed most of my WINGMAN commands to the DASH, and most of the ATC commands. A unit like the Masterpilot makes this all possible. I put NAV, ATC, and WINGMAN commands in the Masterpilot and reserve targetting and avionics systems for my sticks. Perfect!

I would like to see the use of the proper color LEDs for the five function buttons. Better still, if a small LCD display line was added above the function buttons, you could create your own labels along with your choice of command sets. So instead of seeing VIEWS OUT above the left button I would see ATC and then NAV above the next button. THAT would be sweet!

Click to continue . . .

The Masterpilot Programmer

Quickshot's Masterpilot value pack includes the programmer and it can be found at Chips and Bits. This unit goes inline with the Masterpilot and allows you to map your keyboard to the buttons of your choice.

I was a bit surprised at the ease of the learning curve, even while there are some improvements that could be made in the software. I had the unit inline, software up and was actually programming in about ten minutes. After twenty minutes I was fairly flying along. The interface is quite intuitive. Chorded strokes are simply, so you can use SHF, CTL and ALT easily with any other key.

Perhaps best of all, there is no need to disengage your HOTAS setup in order to program. You can leave the programmer in line and you simply press the PROGRAM button when needed. Otherwise the default is button out in NORMAL mode and there is no interference with your keyboard or HOTAS setup.

You don't even need your keyboard to program the unit. All is done by the click of a mouse and a keyboard template that pops up when you select a given button. You click on the on screen masterpilot graphic to select the button you wish to program, click on CONFIGURE, and a keyboard graphic pops up. You click on the key you wish to assign to the button, and you're done! And yes, you can even program the grey keys to the unit.

When you've completed the programming you click on FINISH and then save your file and download it if you're ready to go. Need to check later what keys went where? As you see in the shot above, selecting a given key brings the recorded keystrokes onto the template (Tab and 5 in the example) as well as a nice yellow label as in Internet Explorer that describes the function you have input. (For some reason the labels aren't picked up by Hypersnap).

Since you name and save the file you will be able to share these files with other users, so you can pick up a template from someone else and modify it to suit your preferences. And the EEPROM holds up to three separate configurations at a time, so you don't have to do a download every time you switch games. As for memory capacity, I recorded 26 functions in a quick trial for my F22: ADF file, using up only 28% of the total memory for the first slot.

Once completed you remove the EEPROM from the programmer and install it into the Masterpilot unit. You then have to shut down your system and restart in order for the unit to read the EEPROM. This is the only interruption in an otherwise simply operation.

Quickshot supplies a 5 pin DIN Male to PS/2 Female adapter for those with the old style keyboard connectors as well as three blank cards for recording configs. You can print out a command list in a table format, but you then have to write the correct function to the correct space on the card and then insert the card in the Masterpilot unit to mark the appropriate buttons. It would be great if Quickshot would make a nice print utility such as that provided by Saitek for their PC Dash. Printing a card, even on paper, to insert into the Masterpilot would be a much nicer option.

Still, the present method works, and Quickshot will likely release their own command sets for newer games soon enough. But for those of us who prefer our own way, this is the ONLY way to go! I do wish it had a small light on the face plate since I usually fly in a darkened room.. niggling item.

Compared directly to the PC Dash the Masterpilot looks better and fits the genre. It also sits between a stick and throttle on the desk more comfortably, and the Masterpilot combined with a HOTAS can completely eliminate the need for your keyboard. Hmm, gotta like that! I also had a few problems with the PC Dash not registering key presses in sequence, but for some reason the Masterpilot works right every time.. I can see two of these units making their way into a homebuilt cockpit very nicely.

The Masterpilot can be found for $55 US, and the programmer for $29 or in the Value Pack bundle for even less! For an all around great product we award the Masterpilot our "Top Pick."

To order ONLY the Programmer use this button: