Hi Ian..........

Good to see you over here.    Thanks for sharing.

I notice 3 FMC panels on that photo.  Are those real / active units?  If so, what are you using?

best,

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

PS:  Who is "Machinemart"?

Well done, I kinda wish my cockpit had that look. Why are you flying on the right? British I assume?

BAW19 wrote on May 15^th, 2008 at 3:48am:

Keep practising. Pilots have to be ambidextrous & there is no right or wrong hand. You would have to use the wrong hand to fly even a simple trainer like the Cessna 152 or Piper Cherokee.*

*PS. That's what makes them good trainers.

Still looking for co-pilots (can't believe there are so few in Essex!!)

New picture at the top of the thread for anyone interested.

Ian

Hi Steve

I use two computers for the sim and a third in another room for flight planning etc (once you get past a certain point it gets a bit awkward to use the sim PCs for email etc).

All three machines were sourced from the same place (AutDirect) and are all AMD AM2 4200+ machines with 4gb RAM, 160gb hard drives and nvidia cards (fastest is a humble 7950GT but it dipslays FSX fine).

One machine runs FSX, the Cockpit Solutions server, FSInn and some home made EICAS software, another run the actual client gauges from Cockpits solutions, Ellie Systems EADI and ND gauges and both machines run some home made hardware interfaces to read switches and fire up the LEDs for things like the landing gear panel lights. The thirds currently runs FSCommander, Servinfo, Simplates. a home made cargo generator and a home made Weather map generator (that's crude and un-finished!).

They all talk across a home netwokd and use FSUIPC/Wide client to swap data.

Hope that gives you what you need! I'm being hugely enconomical in terms of electricity for my set up. Some builders prefer to use lots of old PCs that have been thrown out by schools and business. One cockpit I know of has something like 14 machines running his cockpit (they have a lot of really good software!!). Each machine performs one task on it's own so it doesn't need to be big or powerful but the trade-off is space,  heat and of course the electricity bills! I went for a small number of faster machines and so far it seems to be working fine.

The projector is an Optoma - it works just fine but boy does it get hot. I've  had to tape heating duct to the fan grill to pipe the hot air into another room. It's the equivalent of a small fan heater - something they neglect to mention on the advertising! When I bought it VGA was the status quo  - next time I'll get SVGA or better but the one thing I was careful to pick was a machine that was bright enough - you don't want to have to close the curtains to see something!

Ian

ps Come Essex people don't be shy! If you fly with VATSIM srely you'd rather fly as a crew??!!

One more quick question: who has hardware FMC's? If you have dummies, how do you set the info in the FS? Do you still have a keyboard there?

Ah - sorry! I'm afraid the challenge of building is figuring it all out and I really don't have any plans - it's all done on the back of beer mats so I have nothing I can pass on sorry
If it helps there are webstiese all over the net that hint at measurements and dimensions - I just surfed and surfed until I found the rough sizes and then worked out the rest. The pedestal and main panels are MDF and the glareshield is hardboard over pine battons.


If your're a newebie all you can really do is Google what you need and surf forums like these for tips. I've put some links at the foot of this topic - don't know if they'll help.


I started buy taking an old joystick apart and putting longer wires and bigger switches on the oneose I found inside. When I boxed it up I had a little panel I used to turn the autopilot funtions on and off. Once I'd done that I bought a  circuit board from Beta Innovations, replaced the old joystick with the board and added analog pots to control throttles. Looking back I think these things just evolve - you start with a small thing like an old joystick and over a couple of years it evolves with everything you do building on knowledge you gained previously.

As for the cost, so far I think I spent about £6000. Sounds a lot but it's over a fewe years so the cost spreads out.

http://www.hispapanels.com/tienda/index.php
http://www.betainnovations.com/
http://cockpitsolutions.com/flyware/
http://www.ellieavionics.com/
http://forums.simflight.com/viewforum.php?f=155&sid=b1b4e664a99d2f74d37b455dcac3...
http://www.fsdeveloper.com/
http://www.goflightinc.com/order/index.php
http://members.chello.nl/~r.vanderwiele/HowToPanel2.html
http://mcdu.com/forum/
http://forum.naturalpoint.com/ubbthreads.php?Cat=0&C=2
http://www.navigraph.com/www/fmsdata.asp
http://forums.simflight.com/viewforum.php?f=54
http://blogs.msdn.com/ptaylor/
http://wiki.varxec.net/

http://www.simpit.de/b767dim/pedestal/page_01.htm
http://wiki.varxec.net/b737_NG?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=B737_measurements...
http://wiki.varxec.net/Dimensions
http://www.markuspilot.com/MarkusPilot.htm
http://users.skynet.be/jcordon/cockpit/plans.htm

Hope these help - it's a start!

Ian

(Later - what I was saying about developing your stuff on your previouis attempts:- here's a collection of snaps from the last two of three years showing how my setup has evolved so far.Thost autopilot switches I made from a joystick are still there in picky #1)

Here's your "new guy" question for the day:

Why use outside software for ND, PFD, EICAS? Isn't it all built-in to FSX?

I am watching my son fly the PMDG 747-4 and he can pull up the individual screens and drag them to another monitor attached to the graphic card.

Why use the others?

Hey, can I see a photo from behind showing the monitor mounts, wiring, etc.? That would be a big help.

Thanks for all the other photos too. Now it's even more daunting! 

When I saw the first photo in the thread, the entire assembly looked to be made of metal. Is it MDF? If so, what size?

Did you cut and make the various boxes yourself or can these be found pre-made?

Gosh what a lot of questions  

I use third party gauges because they're controllable and you get more with them. For example my with my Ellie stuff I can use software to insert V speeds on the speed tape, on the ND I can use switches to show or hide the flightplan, scroll through it's waypoints, show TCAS traffic, display (fake) weather maps and all of it's dedicated software so I can scale it to fit my glass cockpit monitors without loosing resolution or taking a performance hit. And of course I can run them across a network on a second PC without having to install FSX on it.

As for the construction it's all wood - I simply can't afford the tools and equipment to build it from metal and if I did it would have to be alluminium which is a sod to paint. I used 6mm MDF for the panels and pedestal with battons to brace it where needed. The individual switch panels are hardboard so I can lift them out to work on the switches and LEDs.

There, that's destroyed the illusion hasn't it  

Ian

Yeah id love to fly with that cockpit..
To bad all I have so far on my list to but is yoke, throttle, and the SECM and 2 switches and buttons..

Just A question why is the seat you use on the right and not the left..

BAW19 wrote on Aug 5^th, 2008 at 11:30am:


Ian,

I got my seat (my pit models the captain's side only) from the car wrecking yard.  It is from a Ford Winstar van.  Cheap, nicely adjustable, and sort of looks like the real thing.

best,

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

BAW19 wrote on Aug 11^th, 2008 at 1:25pm:


Ian,

Yup.....got back day before yesterday in the wee wee hours.  American connection after an ahead of schedule JAL Narita to Kennedy srrival ..... American was 2 hours delayed (surprise surprise!).

I have had the the Aura Bass Shakers (a pair) hooked to my captains seat for quite a while.  Bolted to the frame that holds the car seat.  Amazing.

As to blowing the amp....... if the impedence is matched.... shouldn't blow it.  And I find I run VERY low power.  Otherwise I am bouncing around so much that I can't hold the yoke      .  

I want to write a VB6 driver for the audio that somehow converts turbulance movements of the aircraft in the sim to ultra low frequency sound... so that the seat will at least vibrate when the aircraft kets kicked around.  As close as I'll get to a full motion pit.

best,

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

PS:  See PM.

That's a truly awesome pit mate!! good job!!

i was impressed when you said you spent only around 6000 quid on it... when FSX came out here in Brazil, they setup a flight pit that looked just like yours in one store, as a marketing thing... i sat around there and talked to the guys who built it and they told me they had spent like 150,000 BRL (roughly 100,000 US dollars) on their rig...  yes... that much!!

actually... now that i think of it... taxes are so unbelievably high ( ) in brazil, that it kinda makes sense why they spent so much... it takes a lot of hardware and expensive software to pull off a build like this, and nothing is more overpriced in brazil than computer stuff...

anyways, they weren't cutting any corners there, it was a full pit based on the PMDG 737 and using project magenta gauges... but even that wouldn't explain the absurd amount they spent...

well, i won't ramble any longer... truly awesome work there, honest!!
i wish i was you right now 

Cheers

HarvesteR