Frasca 141 Texan/Harvard T6 Sim

[zswobbie1]

Hi Guys, We got hold of a Frasca 141 Sim. This thing is about 20 years old & was used as a Texan/Harvard T-6 proceedural sim. It has an off-board instructors console & a (now missing) 2nd PC for vector graphics. A great pity as I'm not sure how to post images.

 

Anyhow, we do not have any kind of service manual for this, which makes it a challenge to even try see if it works. It has an on-board PC, well, it uses a dedicated old fashioned card/type PC with the sofware in eproms. We have no idea if the PC is working (components probably 'dry' ofter 20 years, or if the guages can 'turn over'.

 

So, our plan B is to strip the thing, remove the guages & put a 23" panel behind the dash. Still not sure if to use FS9 or P3D as the engine as yet, but will probably use a Leo Bodnar card. The engine is dependant on the available scenery for us. We are in Cape Town, South Africa & will probably use the Aeroworx freeware scenery, as it's the most comprehensive for us. There are some very decent T-6 flight models out there to be checked out as well. The sim does not have to be FAA approved or anything like that.

 

It looks like these:

http://thunderbirdaviation.com/fleet/planeZ/index.asp & http://www.simulatorbroker.com/models/frasca141.htm but with a stick instead of a yoke.

 

Any ideas? thoughts on this & our way forward?

 

Regards,

Robin

[Elhrairah]

If its 20 years old you might want to consider just abandoning the old computers and looking into an Arduino or Raspberry PI solution. Micro controllers have advanced a ton and are incredibly easy and cheap to interface now for hobbyists with no knowledge of electrical circuitry or programming.

 

The guages are guages. If they are electrical and driven by servos, then a micro controller would be able to work with them. This is most likely the case. There are very few parts that would deteriorate, so you could probably use all of your hardware and just replace the computers it has with something up to date. Youtube is a good reference for starter projects etc.

 

Hope that helps

[zswobbie1]

Thanks for the advice. The guages are a combination of original modded guages as well as custom built guages, all driven by dedicated software, of which we know nothing, so we have no idea on the innerds of the guages. The dedicated computer is an old rack style, with pull out cards of sorts. Some of the guages have connectors that look like RS232 connectors, but probably are not. We actually not too sure where to start trying to interface, as the guages use various types of connectors, mostly custom, to link to the controller card.

 

Yup, we will dump the old PC & probably use a decent Windows box.