Ever seen the reverser warning indicators light up? I myself haven't so far. At any time when I push F2 to activate the thrust reverse, I can hear the terrific roaring sound of the engines inside the cabin. In spot plane view mode I can see the reversers pull back from the engines just like the real ones, exposing the mesh inside. But I miss the reverser warning lights shine up on the default 737 panel. The small "Reverser Unlocked Left" and "Reverser Unlocked Right" indicators just above the main engine set of [window00] remain gloomily dark as usual. No visuals of the reverse thrust being active. No sign of getting alive! Nothing at all! Everyone has this, but I guess the issue has never been addressed.

The 737-400 default panel on the left shows that the low oil and valve indicators can light up, but the reverser unlocked lamps do not visually indicate when reverse thrust is active. The two gauges Reverser Unlocked Left and Reverser Unlocked Right (see yellow squares) remain dark. On the right: the 777 default panel where the active reverse status is clearly indicated on the EICAS.

Drat! There's always something wrong. I still remember we had this with FS98, and things weren't smoothed out in FS2000 either. So have we got this issue once again? Has it struck again in FS2002? Well, I definitely believe so. It seems as if we just have another old FS98 and FS2000 carryover flaw again.

Time for investigation now. What's wrong here? The first thing to do, I reckon, is to open the panel.cfg file to check if the entries for the respective gauges are correct or damaged. I scroll halfway down through the [window00] section where it finally says:

   gauge16=737-400!Reverser Unlocked Left, 354, 68
   gauge17=737-400!Reverser Unlocked Right, 416, 68

No doubt, the entries and the values are all right. Nothing extraordinary that might give any reasonable explanation why the reverse indicators do not light up. Make no mistake, basically the reverse thrust is successfully activated after hitting the F2 tab. It's just annoying me a bit that the active status is not indicated visually as it surely does in a real B737-400, as a British aircraft maintenance engineer wrote me.

The gauge is listed up as fully installed. So why doesn't it show up when the reverse thrust is activated by pushing the F2 keytab? The body copy gives further details about a work around to fix the problem.

I soon realized that things weren't that easy though. The necessary gau files were listed up as installed gauges within the 737-400.gau package (2.229MB). No such luck, this check-up was once again kinda dead-end street. No need to reload the flight situation or boot up Flight Simulator once again, I knew the warning lights would not light up. I have tried it so damn often now. I set myself a time limit. In case I should not be able to fix that beasty issue within the next hour or two, I was determined to leave things as they were. After all, whether these crazy reverser indicators would eventually light up or not was not a matter of life and death, was it?

So if I was not clever enough to solve that problem basically, I at least wondered whether I could figure out any sort of workaround. While I was still thinking it over and over, I remembered that once upon a time a nice guy had already found some sort of solution to this issue. Back at the times of FS98 we (also) had to realize that MS had obviously forgotten a gauge file, which then meant that these warning lights did not show up either. I hurried downstairs to have a close-up look into my junk box, where I keep all the old backups of former flightsim versions, including the adaptations and changes I had made to them. It did not take long until I found what I was looking for: a zip archive by FPDA which contained the missing 737-400 reverse warning lights gauge produced by Andreas Jaros early in 1998. Andreas had saved me (he could have been even more helpful if he had answered my emails to share his wisdom with me).

It's not a fault that we don't see anything else but the black gauge bitmap in this dialogue window. With other similar gauges this may be different though. Especially with some more modern gauges the active image is also displayed.

Piece of cake now. Unzipping the archive and installing the gauge file into the FS2002 gauge folder went as easy as pie. I then created the necessary command line in the [window00] section of the default 737-400 panel cfg file. So, if you are like me and you miss the nice effect of reverser warning indicators light up after touchdown, you may fix the problem this way:

• first download the FPDA_737_Warning_Lights.zip from the web.
• next unzip the files in the archive and copy the FPDA_737_Reverser_Warning.GAU into the FS2002 gauge folder
• go to the folder ...\aircraft\b737_400\panel and open the panel.cfg file by a text editor such as Windows notepad or similar
• scroll down to the end of the [window00] section, and after the last (default) gauge40= entry line you must add another line like this: gauge41=FPDA_737_Reverser_Warning, 355, 40, 93, 43 (optimized for a resolution of 800x600; for 1024x768 set y-pos 41, not 40)

So this is what it should look like in the panel cfg (note that I have left out most of the entry lines to save space in the screen shot here):

I don't see that there should be any problem. If for any bizarre reason you happen to miss the successive gauge number, FS2002 does no longer stop when loading the panel gauges. It just goes on to the next gauge number. So, a break in the progression is no longer critical. Check it out yourself. It works. In the CfgEdit dialogue window I then controlled the position of the newly installed gauge. It looked pretty fine. Keep in mind that it is not absolutely important to have this panel editor at hand to perform the required changes right here, but for all those who do a lot of panel, the freeware CfgEdit and most of all its commercial upgraded version FS Panel Studio are highly valuable programs which I can strongly recommend.

Here's another example of how to do it: the default Learjet panel has just been fitted with the reverser warning lights, too. In the panel cfg file an extra line has been inserted for gauge34, which then displays the reverser lights at the top of the EICAS (unlike in the real cockpit though).

Gosh, I am quite aware it's but a meager workaround for something that should work by default. However, the effect is not bad, I guess. Why the original gauges don't work properly I can't honestly tell you, not right now. The other very similar gauges for gear, low oil, and start valve do work and light up as they should. And I can't see that any relevant gauge file is missing here altogether. Back in my mind a nagging thought hits me: there's some hidden and unknown secret in all that, I suppose. Maybe some of you fellows out there know the secret. Just tell me, I'd like to understand it.

For me the work around is all right now. It makes the final stopping procedure a bit more enjoyable and realistic. And that's all there is to it (if it weren't for the fact that the reverse thrust doesn't take much effect in slowing down the aircraft; I have once again tested that in FS98 where you can almost feel the sudden drag when the reversers are activated).

The zip archive contains the enhanced panel cfg file for the default 737_400, a further panel cfg text file that might serve as a kind of tutorial to help you do some alterations to panels in general, and a complete update of all default panel cfg files for FS2002.

Phew! I am on final approach to JFK Intl 13L now. The late evening sun is faintly reflected from the flaps and gear struts while the landing lights are illuminating the ground immediately before touch down. Inside the cockpit the 737 panel reveals some of the many alterations I have made to the FS2002 default panels. And now, first of all of course, the reverser active warning lights are back again. Back at last! And I have a dream that one day, at the time of FS2004, we will have them and a lot more all by default. It's just because I want to spend time flying and not fiddling.

Don't forget your beloved ones.

Ulrich Klein