Grounded

Well its been a while, the cockpit is in the loft, the plans are on hold and flying just remains a dream. Watch this space though, 4th generation home pit will happen one day. The parts out there in the real world get cheaper and more realistic. Simulation is one of the things that PC's do better than consoles, at least at the moment.

Caught relaxing over the south coast

Yoke Fitting

Well tonight it was time to re-cable the sim. Its now all neat and routed better to support the panel being in front of the screen. The wires now all route down the side of the table so as not to get caught under the panel which rests on the desk when in use.

I also took the chance to get around the stupid mount on the CH Yoke that meant it never fitted on the desk properly. The issue is it wont clamp to a desk under about 2cm thick. Sadly my chipboard desk is 1cm thick...

My solution was to screw a strip of wood to the edge of the desk underneath, now for the first time the yoke is firmly fitted. Although I now can more easily skim my knees on the desk ;)

Panel Solution

Well I got the panel working, the issue was stupidly simple. I built the panel at 1280 x 1024, and FSX was set to run in 1024 x 768... doh.

Once that was sorted I was able to start pulling the instruments together. Still needs tweaking, but it is already flyable. Thank goodness, with access to instruments and the ability to look around I actually landed ok. Yesterday without the panel flying VC only my visual approach was awful!

Mockup Panel

I have fitted the GoFlight modules and the Hobbs meter, really feels like it is getting somewhere now. For the picture I mocked up the instruments, but in reality they are driving me mad.

Every time I set it all up it looks great. But put it in FSX, top screen is fine, bottom screen it all gets larger.... GRRRR...

Both screens are the same resolution, at least outside of FSX. I will need to either trial end error it, or spend some time online in the newsgroups working out what I am doing wrong. Most likely I will need to do both.

Still its feels good to have it starting to look right, despite the setbacks.

GoFlight Test

I finally got to digging out my GoFlight modules, a GF-45 and RP48 brought a few years back on ebay. They took a little coaxing, but I got them running in FSX. Still seem to be having some issues with the RP48 and my RealityXP guages, but its getting there. In the final design I wont be using the goflight modules to control the altimeter or heading bug, I hope to use the rotary encoders installed directly in the panel through Leo's joystick interface.

That will leave me 4 encoders for use with goflight. I think they will end up being used for dimmer, selecting the mode on the GF-45, and rudder / elevator trims.

Next step is to panel mount them in my new cockpit panel. The RP48 will go at the top of my stack, the 8 buttons neatly line up with the audio 8 buttons in the aircraft normally mounted at the top, So that is likely to be their use. The lights, cowl heat, etc will go through my still to be purchased joystick interface.


The picture shows the test run, I still need to build a new panel in FSX to run on the lower monitor through the wood template. So while flying I am still running 1 screen with virtual cockpit hence the upper screen being dark.

Hold for incoming traffic

Ok, no progress for 3 months... well we had a new landing in the family and she has taken most of that thing we call 'Free Time':



Still the bug is catching me up, last night saw a gentle flight from Fairoaks to Sandown at dusk. See below for the screenshot, pure joy to complete.



(we wont mention me bending the prop on the landing... long time no fly. Lack of sleep, and rushing the approach is just as bad in a virtual world as in the real one. Luckily there is no AAIB in FSX)