G1000 Based SimPits, Why No Buzz?

It seems that I hear a lot about people building Boeing-737 home cockpits featuring “Glass” cockpits. And I hear about people building Cessna-172 home cockpits featuring glass versions of “Analog” gauges. People used to build F-16 Viper home cockpits.

 

Just browsing around and doing forum searches, I am not picking up any buzz about Garmin-1000 based home cockpits. I mean, if I had recently graduated from a pilot program with 250 hours and was trying to move into air-cargo / air-taxi / air-ambulance, I think that there would be more openings for G1000 equipped small and medium aircraft (Cessna Caravans and Beechcraft Barons) compared to Boeing-737's. Wouldn't a G-1000 based home simulator be great for practicing navigation and landings appropriate for a target employer before a job interview? And you could still have fun visiting new places from tropical islands to snowcapped mountains.

 

Again, why no “buzz”? Is there something “not-cool” about G-1000's?

 

Thanks in advance

JD

 

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Elsewhere on the internet …

Not many choices for G1000's simulators with buttons and knobs

1-Emuteq G1000 - 2,300 GBP ( ~ 3,000 USD )

--http://www.emuteq.com/G1000.html

2-F1 Tech 1000 (using Emuteq G1000 I think) - 5,000 USD

--http://www.flight1tech.com/Products/AvionicsSimulations/F1Tech1000.aspx

3-RedBird TD2 - 8,000 USD

--http://simulators.redbirdflight.com/products/td2

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JD, I think it is a matter of, if you are going to dream, dream big. I have been flight simming since 1998, when I decided, after a 15 year layoff to start flying again. I bought MSFS 98 and would prefly business flights. A couple of years later I decided to start practicing possible instrument approaches into the airports I was flying. So, I bought some Go-Flight radio modules and the cockpit building started.

 

Over the years I noticed that I am one of the few real life pilots who build cockpits and flight sim. Most of the real life pilots I knew thought of MSFS as a game and looked down on flight simmers as kids playing at flying. But back to your question.

 

Twelve years ago I lost my medical certificate. That ended my real life flying. I then began to "think big". My cockpit at the time was two monitors and a homebuild, two layer, stand with wings. The two monitors functioned as the outside view and the instruments. The wings held the Go-flight modules and a switch array I had built. Since, I no longer needed it to practice real flights, I decided to build what I could never fly again. A simulator build around the T-38.

 

I had flown the T-38 in pilot training and always loved the plane. It was like an Italian sports car. It wasn't the brute force of the F-4 but a finesse airplane. As a trainer it wasn't as complicated as a fighter like the F-4 or F-16. But, it was fast and could do anything they did, except drop bombs and fire air to air weapons. So, I started on a seven year journey of researching and building.

 

I believe that most cockpit builders fall into two categories. Want to be airline pilots and want to be fighter jocks. I do not say this disparagingly. Very few people are fortunate enough to attend Navy or Air Force pilot training or have the resources to attend a flying program through an ATC rating. However, we can all dream and imagine. So, we build cockpits to allow us to better "suspend our disbelief" that we are earth bound, and we pretend we are either fighter pilots or airline pilots.

 

That, JD is, I think, the reason you see so few G1000 or any GA aircraft cockpits being build. Most of the flight simmers who are building small GA cockpits are student pilots or private pilots who are using the cockpits for training purposes rather than pretend. The rest of us dream big.

 

John

Somehow I thought that more of the people here were “preparing for their future”.

But you are absolutely correct, at 50+ there is no way that I am going through a career pilot program, much less attain an ATC. I think that I will follow your lead regarding that “sports-car” airplane.

 

Thanks

JD

Somehow I thought that more of the people here were “preparing for their future”.

But you are absolutely correct, at 50+ there is no way that I am going through a career pilot program, much less attain an ATC. I think that I will follow your lead regarding that “sports-car” airplane.

 

Thanks

JD

 

If you have any questions on building a T-38 cockpit, let me know.

 

John

G1000 is a good platform. Lots of aircraft have it as standard avionics. I built a setup around the Emuteq hardware. Use it with both X-Plane and Prepar3d. Can also run a sixpack on the PFD and MFD so got the best of both worlds. Only drawback is that at the pace avionics is advancing, in a few years the G1000 is going to be replaced by the G3000 or the next big thing.