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home cockpit (Read 1088 times)

Jan 5^th, 2007 at 4:16pm

a1 Offline
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Tied In A Knot I Am

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I was thinking of building my own home cockpit. How much do you think a medium size would cost?

790i : QX9650 : 4Gb DDR3 : GeForce 8800 GTX : 1 WD Raptor : 1 WD VelociRaptor 150

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Reply #1 - Jan 6^th, 2007 at 5:36pm

beaky Offline
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Newark, NJ USA

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a1 wrote on Jan 5^th, 2007 at 4:16pm:

I was thinking of building my own home cockpit. How much do you think a medium size would cost?

Depends on soooo many things:
Enclosed?
Motion?
Two-seater?
Instruments?
Switches?
LCD displays?
All handmade, or using real or modified parts?
There's a wide range of possibilities and budgeting any one of them depends primarily on how much work you're willing to do on it.

For what it's worth, I began by considering what exactly I would want. It started very simple...sort of a desktop control box with a car seat. I looked at the ready-made options first, and saw that I could save a lot by doing most of the building myself.

Then I found enough free materials to make a full enclosure- this means a lot more work, but I still haven't spent a lot of money. In the end, the greatest expense will be on the electronics.

I haven't kept track of the receipts, but offhand I'd say so far I've spent about $200 on hardware, materials, and tools, and after buying all the switches, controller boards, etc. the total will be about $500 to $600. That's not including the new PC, monitor and speakers, of course.

But if I were to buy a fully enclosed generic simpit, set up for twins, jets, etc , with enough switches, etc to avoid using the keyboard and mouse at all during flight, I'd be paying a helluva lot more... even a good desktop panel with yoke or stick and pedals could cost over $2000 total.

I'd highly recommend looking at the links posted above in this section; it might give you a better idea of what others have done on various budgets.

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Reply #2 - Jan 6^th, 2007 at 7:43pm

JBaymore Offline
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Under the curse of the
hombuilt cockpit!

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a1,

Hi and welcome to the Homebuild Cockpits Forum.

Rottydaddy gave you a lot of straight stuff above. To build on that...........

First rule......... it will cost more than you THINK it should.

Second rule ............. you will never be satisfied once you start building.

Third rule.......... the better a craftsman and scrounger you are, the less it will cost.

Fourth rule......... the more exact an aircraft replica you want to build, the more it will cost.

Fifth rule........... you can easily spend more than you can make.

There is a LOT of information already posted in this forum. Go back thru a lot of the past threads and you will find some idea of what others are spending and what certain parts of a pit cost.

As an example of the variation in possible costs....... you can often find "junk" computers and monitors for free. If you have to buy them......... there goes some money. For some people, buying a "junk" computer for $100 to $200 is "cheap". For others..... that is a lot of money. My pit will take a minimum of 5 computers to run. In my case, all of them are freebie junkers. If I had to buy them at say $200 a pop.... there would have been a grand spent on just one part of the pit.

Another example: a single Goflight VRP radio panel is about $150 new. So a decent "radio stack" based on that kind of stuff could cost you about $600.

ALso look at the "cockpit Building Resources" sticky post at he top of the forum. That will have a lot of info on what is available and what prices are like.

Welcome to the insanity.

best,

.........................john

Intel i7 960 quad 3.2G LGA 1366, Asus P6X58D Premium, 750W Corsair, 6 gig 1600 DDR3, Spinpoint 1TB 7200 HD, Caviar 500G 7200 HD, GTX275 1280M, Logitec Z640, Win7 Pro 64b, CH Products yoke, pedals + throttle quad, simpit

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Reply #3 - Jan 10^th, 2007 at 12:50am

ermias Offline
Colonel
KPHL/HHSB

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Posts: 79

a1,

Given all what was said above;
A- You are going to be sleep deprived (as I am).
B- Try to convince your spouse (if you have) to be patient and understanding.
C- Keep in mind that no matter what you try it is a very difficult concept to explain to others.
D- It would probably, become your only world of sanity while it is considered insanity by non-simbuilders.
E- Alot of daydreaming about your simulator.

Enjoy your sim pit and never give up. Actually once you start it NO ONE including yourself will stop you!

Regards, ermias

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Reply #4 - Jan 11^th, 2007 at 9:00pm

cwloew Offline
Colonel
To fly or not to fly,....
that's a stupid question
New Mexico

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Posts: 10

I once saw a cockpit that was a poster of an instrument panel, and a CH flight yoke and the single monitor was used with the cockpit showing on the monitor ........... I have seen cockpits that are so realistic that Hollywood used them in movies.

Welcome to a whole different planet - just by asking the question puts you in the need for "AS REAL AS IT GETS" for real. As real as it gets for me ...... and my budget has been more or less dependant on my land lords, we have no extra room, no garage, and noo basement, and they did not want an airplane sitting in the living room.

I have settled for my first build to make a desktop panel, using an old tv stand and enclosing the stand with formica and stiffeners the inside has my first set of modules from http://hagstromelectronics.com, I bought the KE USB 36 and break out board, very easy to hook up, wire and configure ..keep in mind that their products are keyboard encoders where each switch represents a keyboard key FS command, or what ever simulator you fly. I have the luck of saving my first computer and buying a replacement pc and monitor, so I still have the tower case and 22 monitors.

Nothing fancy, just the minimums to get me flying while I build my "prototype" (Aren't I the dreamer?)

Giddness Grin