Mile High Wings USB Interface Review

Flight simulators and driving simulators have at least one thing in common - they're totally unsatisfactory to use with the wrong controller. After an hour with just a keyboard or a generic gamepad on either, you'll be itching for the real thing.

That's where the Mile High Wings USB Interface comes in. It's a very compact dongle (2 3/8" x 3/4" x 1/4") which connects your existing radio transmitter to a PC or Mac, using the radio's trainer jack. Cleverly, the interface is not soldered to a particular plug or cord, instead using a mini connector. This lets you use a wide variety of radios with the same interface by switching cables.

Mile High Wings provided me with a unit to test which included a six pin square adaptor for my Futaba 7C radio. It also came with an optional second cable which connects the interface to an ESC for programming, which I haven't seen in similar products. Finally a CD is included with electronic documentation (also available online ), their eFlightWorks configuration software, and a variety of free and trial simulators for PC. There is no Macintosh software included on the CD.

Installation under Windows XP was straightforward. Because the interface uses the built-in Windows drivers, I just plugged it in and it was recognized as a joystick automatically. Happily, that's where the notion of joystick ends.

Rather than using some generic control panel meant for gamers, Mile High Wings has written their own eFlightWorks software , which is worth the price of admission. This is a really nice app written by and for R/C fans. The first time it's run, eFlightWorks takes you through a four screen calibration process to set up your radio. I was happy to see all seven channels operate properly, including the flaps knob and toggle switches. The calibration wizard sets up the range of motion of each control, normal/reverse status, center point, and remappings for specific simulators. All of this can be saved to a file, allowing multiple setups.

Before starting, I made a new model memory in the radio called SIMWIN, made sure the endpoint adjustments were set to 100%, and set the radio on high rates. The Futaba 7C requires the main power switch to be on for use with the simulator, so Mile High Wings suggests removing the frequency pin from the transmitter. This is the responsible thing to do, especially if you live near a flying field. On higher end radios, connecting to the trainer jack but leaving the main power switch off will deactivate the FM transmitter, but let you use all the computer functions. Whether your radio has this feature is specific to the manufacturer and model you use, you'll have to try it to find out.

I decided to test the interface on my Apple MacBook Pro laptop. I already had BootCamp installed, which allowed me to reboot into Windows XP and run it natively. My first task was to try FMS , perhaps the most popular freeware flight simulator. Unfortunately, it crashed on startup every time. A quick trip to the FMS Forums revealed the problem and the fix - FMS requires a serial COM port to be present, and newer laptops don't have one. It was fairly easy to add a fake COM port and get up and running. Unfortunately I have to run this "registry fix" file each time after rebooting into Windows.

Flying in FMS felt great. Subjectively, the controls had a lot of resolution (the interface appears as a 10 bit joystick, meaning 1024 steps per control) and responded quickly I was also happy to see that dual rates and exponential worked exactly as they do at the field. In fact, it would be useful to set up different model memories for different planes inside the same simulator, to get each to fly its best.

I also tried two other Windows simulators which were included on the CD, PRE-Flight v1.95 and ClearView. Older versions of PRE-Flight were freeware, and the CD contains the last free version. With a little bit of control setup, it was easy to get flying, and everything worked as expected. If you like the simulator, development has continued as a commercial product, so check out their site for updates.

ClearView from SVK Systems is a commercial product, and the included version is a limited demo. There were four helicopters and one plane available for test in a photorealistic setting which looked great. Configuring my radio was again easy and pretty much just worked. With this and other Windows simulators, you have a choice of using eFlightWorks to remap the channels, which makes things a bit easier the first time you configure a simulator. On the other hand, you'll have to go back and load a preset each time you change from one simulator to another. I ended up setting eFlightWorks to the default mappings and figuring things out in each app, even though the channel names were sometimes misleading.

Setting up the interface for Mac OS X was just as simple as Windows - I plugged it in, and it was detected as a USB joystick. Since there's no system preference panel for joysticks, all the configuration is done inside each simulator. I first tried CRRCSim version 0.9.8, an open source program focused on gliders. It was easy to assign the channels, set up the sticks, and get flying. I had good control over a variety of sailplanes and powered models, although they varied considerably in sensitivity. The simulator seems to have a bug where the controls sometimes lose calibration after a crash, but it doesn't happen every time, and is not a problem with the interface.

Next up was Slope Soaring Simulator, another open source project. Piloting two channel gliders worked right away, but helicopters was a little more tricky. The default four channel, mode 2 joystick setup was using one of my toggle switches for yaw, while the other channels seemed OK. This was easily solved by editing the heli config file, making a new entry for Mile High Wings, and mapping channel six to the simulator's channel four. After making my new config file the default, I was able to fly smoothly, or at least as well as an airplane pilot flies a helicopter. This is an impressive program, available for Windows and Linux too.

The last Mac simulator I tried was RC Helicopter Simulator 1.9 by AlphaMacSoftware, which costs 30 Euros but has a free trial. Getting my radio to work with this program turned out to be a major challenge. The simulator's configuration screen is somewhat convoluted, and the 16 bit support for interfaces does not appear to work correctly. After spending an hour trying to use this screen, I instead installed a transmitter config file supplied by Mile High Wings specifically for RCHS. Unfortunately these settings weren't right for my radio, and caused the model to immediately crash without any control. Ultimately, I decided to edit the config file by hand. This took another couple of hours of guesswork until I arrived at some values which made the radio useable. You can download my settings file for the Futaba 7C as a starting point for your own setup.

One of the extra features offered by the Mile High Wings interface is electronic speed control (ESC) programming. The manual describes this feature in depth, but I didn't have a suitable ESC to test with. eFlightWorks supports programming controllers from Castle Creations, Cool Running, ELE, Hyperion, and hexTronik.

After using the interface for several weeks, there's only one change I'd like to see. The current model comes as a circuit board wrapped in red heat shrink, which is fine for home use, but I worried about throwing it in a bag and traveling with it. I think the interface would benefit from a protective plastic enclosure, even if it added to the cost.

The Mile High Wings USB interface is a very well engineered, well thought-out product. The price is about average ($42 USD standard, $46 with the ESC programming cable) unless you build your own, but it offers significantly more features than most of the other options out there, including an upgradable firmware for future improvements. It's also compatible with a wide array of simulators and can even be used with the bundled heli radios that come with some cheaper RTFs, by unmixing the CCPM signals. After putting the interface through its paces, I can confidently recommend it.

You can buy yours direct at the Mile High Wings online store.