American B-25J "Mitchell" Bomber,   "Briefing Time" for MSFS2002 Pro

by Bill Rambow, Jan Visser, Fred Banting, and Robert Young for the Mid-Atlantic Air Museum

Reviewer: Tony Gondola, March 2003

Proceeded by the well known MAAM RD-4 the B-25J is also being distributed as "donation ware" for the Mid-Atlantic Air Museum. As such, proceeds for the sale of the simulated aircraft are used to help finance the restoration and maintenance of the real aircraft in residence at the museum.

The complete package on CD can be ordered direct from MAAM for $25.00. A reduced feature and content freeware version is also available on AVSIM.

Installing from the full package CD was simple and painless, just click on the install program, supply the path to your MSFS main directory and you're in business. Additional materials remain on the CD and are accessed by browsing the CD directly.

Ground handling is an acknowledged weak point with many MSFS aircraft, not so with this big fella.  With a full fuel load and full prop it will take a good burst of power to un-stick but once you're in motion, 13 inches of manifold pressure will keep her rolling along nicely without any tendency to over accelerate. Overshoot and sway is about what you'd expect considering the weight and inertia involved. Turns can be accomplished around a wing tip if you give just enough power to keep things moving or even better, use differential thrust. Just as it was with the real aircraft, landing speeds are low and braking is extremely positive which should be a comfort for short field work. 

Before getting into the air with this aircraft it's important to note that the flight model was designed with all of the MSFS realism sliders, except for P-Factor, set to 100% and not a bit less. P-Factor should be set to 0%. Because of a bug in MSFS, setting this to any other value results in much too strong of an effect that will put you in the weeds with this airplane. Duplicating these settings as outlined in the manual will allow the model to fly as the designers intended and should not be overlooked.

Getting off the ground in the B-25 is very different from anything else you've probably flown. The proper technique is to smoothly go to full power and then, once in motion, pull back on the stick to hold the nose wheel about a foot off the ground. As ground speed increases adjust back pressure to hold that attitude. Once you get used to what that looks like from the cockpit, holding the position is fairly easy. With a moderate crosswind things can get a little tricky but with those big rudders working, it's manageable. I did find It easy to get into a bit of pitch and yaw PIO on takeoff so you need to go light on the inputs, especially the rudders.

With this takeoff technique there is no rotation in the traditional sense. With the nose wheel up the wing is at a positive angle of attack so the airplane simply lifts off with no change in pitch attitude as it reaches flying speed. About the only indication you'll get that you've started flying is the sudden absence of the ground roll shake and rattle.

Picture on the right is early in the takeoff run, notice the nose wheel position about a foot off the runway. The picture on then left illustrates the proper takeoff evolution with no change in pitch.

Once in the air, the manual recommends retracting the gear and leveling out to allow the airspeed to increase to 145 MPH as quickly as possible (yes, the airspeed indicator is calibrated in MPH rather then knots). This speed is SSE or "Safe Engine Out" speed and is the minimum required in order to have enough rudder control in the event of an engine failure. Once SSE is passed the flaps come up. Flap movement is very slow so this operation was smooth with no large changes to chase in pitch or vertical rate. Completion of flap movement is confirmed with an automatic co-pilot voice report.

For the climb, pulling the props to 2400 RPM, adjusting to the suggested speed of 165 MPH and setting trim resulted in a sedate 1000 FPM rate upstairs with a full fuel load. About 37 in. of manifold pressure was required to maintain that climb rate and speed. It's important to note that you can climb faster but as the pilot's manual makes clear, the real B-25 wasn't flown that way. These engines were babied and handled with extreme care so climb to altitude was a slow sedate affair. Of course, short hopping with a low fuel load will allow you to do much better. During climb, roll stability, as you'd expect in a bomber, was very good but the airplane does have a tendency to wander in pitch, it takes while to get the trim just right. Once you do it's fairly steady. Turning on the attitude hold function of the rudimentary autopilot will result in a "hands off" stable climb.

During the cruise phase no issues were encountered. It's not a fast airplane, you'll be moving along well under 200 MPH indicated. If you're flying manually you'll constantly be making small adjustments to maintain altitude although heading is very stable once the airplane is properly trimmed out.

Letting down in the B-25 is simple, just reduce manifold pressure slightly and trim for hands off flight. Descents are long and shallow, mostly because you need to keep the manifold pressure up to keep the engines from cooling down to rapidly. Doing that in the real aircraft often resulted in the engine cutting out when power was reapplied. There doesn't seem to be any penalty to doing that in the sim version but with an airplane as historically accurate as this one is, we may as well fly by the book.

Final approach is done power on with full flaps and gear down. The airplane is very stable in this phase and handles low speed flight well. It's interesting to note that the included videos show exactly the same amount of sided to side wallow that you get in the sim version. Speeds are around 100 knots during approach with a 30% fuel load so you'll have a lot of time to fiddle with your positioning. Landing attitude is slightly nose high but you want to let it plant firmly on touchdown rather then pulling back into a "grease her in" full flare. If you're lightly loaded that can eat up a lot of runway. As on takeoff, the nose wheel should be held off during rollout, this helps to slow the airplane via aerodynamic braking. As mentioned before, the brakes are very powerful so once the nose wheel is down the airplane can be brought to a stop very quickly if needed. Believe it or not, she's a very good short field airplane. 

Stalls, both power on and power off are crisp, fairly deep and easy to control with no tendency to drop a wing. The sim aircraft will not spin but that maneuver was not allowed in the real aircraft as well.

With the B-25's powerful rudders, crosswind landings were no problem. Flying the standard "crabbed" approach was very controllable in winds up to 20 knots. However, you will probably want to fly these with the main panel down and the mini panel up as the view is just too restrictive any other way.

The B-25 flies well on a single engine as long as you remember to keep your airspeed above the minimum safe engine out speed of 145 MPH. If you get the dead engine feathered, watch your airspeed and pay attention to keeping the ball centered you won't have any problems. Turns can be made into or away from the dead engine as long as you don't make them too steep and keep your airspeed constant. Approaches are fast because of the 145 MPH minimum rule but once you're sure of making the strip you can lower gear and flaps for a relatively normal touchdown. Just as in the real thing, single engine ops are nothing to fear and in fact, are a lot of fun if you follow the rules and keep the airplane happy.

As one might expect from a group that has unlimited access to the actual aircraft, the panels are pretty near perfect in replicating what you would find in the real aircraft. In 2D mode you get both pilot and co-pilot side full panels and 360 degree bitmapped views.

The 3/4 forward and side views are standard. However looking 3/4 aft gives you a view from the waist gunners position. Looking aft gives you a view looking rearward from the upper ball turret. Another key combo will give you a view looking forward from the bombardier's station. This provides a spectacular vantage point for watching the scenery go by.

Most of the sounds were digitally recorded aboard or near the real Briefing Time and it really makes a difference. This release has one of the sweetest set of twin engine sounds I've ever heard and it really makes a huge difference in the enjoyment of flying this airplane. The first time you open the throttles, be ready to smile. I know I sure did. To prove the point, click here to download a 1 MB mp3 file of a short engine run up recorded from the sim. With the standard short exhaust stacks this was a VERY loud airplane so you're perfectly justified to turn it up and enjoy.

Other sounds include ground roll, instruments, gear and co-pilot call outs. Over all the sound set is nicely done, well balanced and true to the original aircraft.

The overall detailing and texturing of the 3D model is excellent. The skin of the aircraft has a nice dull specular shine with lots of little skin wrinkles, oil stains, ect. They have done a good job of reproducing the look of an aircraft in service. In addition to the usual gear and flap animations the B-25 also features an opening bomb bay door, working cowl flaps, forward crew entry hatch and animated pilot. If you spend a lot of time in outside view you'll certainly find a lot to enjoy here. 

If you order the full donation package on CD you'll receive some nice extras that help to extend your understanding of the aircraft, it's history and how it was flown. The manual is in HTML format is does a good job of presenting the features of this aircraft in a well organized, easy to use and understand format.

The CD package also includes a copy of the original pilot training manual as well as a series of a dozen mpeg format videos of the real Briefing Time in action. The videos nicely complemented the pilot's manual, making certain operations such as engine start a lot easier to understand. Unfortunately the videos seem to have been encoded in a way that causes Media Player to crash. You'll need a copy of the latest version of Real Player (yuck) to view these without any problems. Other players may work but that's what worked for me. Another rough spot is that fact that the training manual is presented as a series of jpg images. That's great for compatibility but it's a pain to deal with if you're looking for a specific section. It would have been much better to present it in html format for easier browsing.

Whenever you put this amount of detail into an aircraft model, frame rates will tend to become a concern. To their credit, the creators of this package have shown a lot of sensitivity to that issue. To insure usability across a large number of systems the aircraft installs in 3 different versions, standard, medium and light. The medium version does away with the upper turret and bombardiers compartment. The light version does away completely with the virtual cockpit. The manual also offers some good suggestions to further improve performance via MSFS settings. To give you a feel for the performance hit here's the rates in different configurations compared to the stock Cessna 172:

Overall I have to say that this is one of the nicer mega-packages I have flown. The flight modeling is solid, detailing is excellent and the sounds are great. The added materials enhance the overall experience and really help to provide the historical background that's key in getting the most out of this type of aircraft. Once you've learned her ways, flying this airplane delivers a sense of satisfaction that is rare among simulated aircraft today.