Lovely series Kenneth, and much appreciated. The islander and the way Blackbox operate reminds me very much of back in the hey day of FS2004 and if good to hear of an enduring friendship.
My first encounter with a Bulldog was at Newtownards (EGAD) air show in 1987. There was one from the UAS on static that we could go and poke around. It’s a small airfield, so the largest aircraft on the ground were the 360 and Sherpa. The 11 year only me was very happy 
Same here! Only had two flights from RAF Syerston (RIP) but will be fun to fly in one again
looking good, on my list, but i will wait for reviews.
Looking good. Does it have wwise sound? Same quality as Islander (which has great engine sound)?
yes indeed !
full WWISE Sound set including all switches and some extras
Purchased! Looking forward to trying this one out.
Well my first flight was cut a bit short due to some sort of brief power cut in my area so my plan on landing at Colerne will have to wait for the next flight. Game version of Colerne has no taxiways or parking spots so I couldn’t replicate my real life flights in the Bulldog starting up outside the hanger at Colerne, oh well.
Here’s some screenshots of my flight though!
Really enjoyed my first flight. She looks quite good, sounds great and handles great too. It brought back some quiet pleasant memories of sitting in the real thing in my air cadet days many years ago and put a smile on my face.
BBS have really upped their game with this release. I love the Islander but I think its visuals are a bit spotty in places but the Bulldog looks great! I mean, it’s not the best I’ve seen for MSFS, if you peer in very close you’ll see some rough patches here and there or some 2d things like some screws, but sit back in the seat in your regular position and everything looks really quite nice! Textures look pretty decent throughout and he external model looks quite nice and I think it’s a big step up from the Islander.
Sounds are good as well, all WWise with 3d positional effects and the engine sounds louder when you slide open the canopy. Switches mostly all make sounds as well although I did notice some that didn’t such as the VHF and NAV audio switches I think down on the lower console not making any noises but the INOP switches and DME switch next to them did when flipped so I’m guessing that’s a minor bug. Would be nice if the throttle, prop and mix levers made some small noises when moving them but that’s just nitpicking, everything else sounds great and I’m quite pleased with it.
She flies really nice. I did find that I had to give it a fair bit of power to get it moving on the grass at Popham though but she handled nicely on the ground and there was no issues with taking off. Haven’t actually landed it yet though so I can’t comment on that! She handles nicely in the air, did some loops and rolls just fine. Tried some stalls and I managed to get it into a bit of a spin which I got out of easily. When she’s trimmed out she flies level quite nicely. Fun to fly!
There’s two tier knob doodad to adjust lighting and although I didn’t fly it in night it was evening and the lighting seemed pretty good. I like that little stopwatch you get in this cockpit, quite classy and it’s clickable so you can use it to time your navigation exercises. There’s a little Garmin sticker on the top left and if you click it you get a tablet pop up on your left but for me the screen was black and I couldn’t figure out how to get it to show anything. Not sure if that’s a bug with the product, with the sim or maybe a conflict with some mod I have installed though so I can’t comment on what the GPS is like. Probably a G3 or something I guess.
As usual with BBS I’ll have a bit of a moan about a lack of a proper manual. I mean it’s not essential but I think it would be nice to have. The plane is quite simple enough to operate anyway so it’s not necessary but it’s just one of those things I like to see. Oh well.
Overall my first quick impressions are that this is a really nice product! If you’re a fan of single engined light GA planes then you really should give this a go! There might be some more issues or bugs here or there that I’ve not noticed and those with more experience IRL might find some faults but for me, an ex Air Cadet who had a couple of Air Experience Flights in the Bulldog back in the day, I’m more than pleased with my purchase!
Investigating the GPS it should work out of the box …
and a Full manual will be available from our website just as soon as we can post it 
Clicking on Garmin Sticker opens up the AERA Touchscreen GPS …
it works fine here so I am finding it difficult to understand why yours is not …
1 - Your battery switch is on ?
2 - You haven’t deleted any files from the Base MSFS ?#
3 - Or is it that your FPS Screen is just dark. have you tried clicking on the menu ||| button ?
Yeah battery on, don’t recall deleting anything from my base folder and did a complete reinstall not so long ago and tried clicking all buttons. I’ve also emptied out my community folder and still black screen. It’s probably just an issue on my end for whatever reason so I wouldn’t waste any of your time with it unless someone else reports the same problem. Doesn’t bother me anyway as I’m not a huge GPS user.
Anyway taking the Yank registered plane up now. I really like how the cockpit is a bit different from the RAF trainer and I also noticed the rear window is a bit different too. Good stuff!
Yeah one is a Bulldog and the other is an SK61 built for Swedish Army 
Rarely ever fly at night but decided to do so to check out the lighting effects and it looks pretty good. You can flip the map light in the rear of the cockpit to white or reddish orangy light as well although the lamp itself doesn’t seem to show its on. You can fiddle with the panel and instrument brightness to adjust to your liking as well.
Excellent first impressions. This is going to get a LOT of use from me. Some of the textures aren’t great but nothing distracting, overall it looks nice inside and even better outside. Didn’t spot any issues with animations on my first flight. Documentation and checklists are lacking as stated above, I highly recommend you use these for now: Free Scottish Aviation Bulldog Checklists to Download (freechecklists.net) - other than a few minor things the checklists can be followed near-exactly.
I flew KSZP to KONT with live weather and Asobo’s new (and terrible) jarring weather transitions put me into nearly IMC for approach. Thankfully I was already mostly lined up with an ILS approach so it gave me an opportunity to tune into the LOC and shoot a beautiful and successful instrument approach. The aircraft was quite floaty though I do think ground effect was tweaked in the last update(?) so I had a few eager flares that I had to recover from before finally setting her down with the stall horn blaring. One of my better landings.
Sounds are phenomenal! Full sound attenuation when opening the canopy (don’t forget the lock on the pilot’s side!) - the sound attenuation isn’t just ON/OFF either, it actually changes based on how far open or closed you have the canopy. Awesome stuff and a target for other developers to hit.
As with the Bird Dog and Islander, you’re getting a really great addon for your money here. BBS has become in my mind one of the premier developers for MSFS! Though it may not be quite as well textured inside, I very much put this into the league of the excellent IRIS Tutor.
Thank to Black Box for making my Saturday, I look forward to whatever you do next!
Some wishlist items so far:
Another great aircraft in the sim. A joy to fly, beautifully modelled. I love this and the islander. They’re just so well done and so enjoyable. Thanks guys 
Add my name to the list of people really enjoying this one, looks good, sounds great and really good to fly.
I’d love options for a panel with some minor upgrades to the NAV equipment, no AP or GPS but a second NAV radio and an ADF would be nice and some docs would be great. (For example can you open the canopy and if so how ? )
There’s a little lock on the left side you have to turn so the white line is facing back:
With respect to the Garmin bug above – I had the same issue with the toolbar version of the GTN750 when I was flying the JF Hawk today – black screen and nothing to be done about it. I’m guessing it must be a mod conflict of some kind.
I will inevitably purchase the Bulldog, but just haven’t gotten around to it yet… Glad to see the positive reviews. I’m a big fan of the Islander.
Thanks I was missing the lock on the side !
