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Got Nothing Better To Do With Your Time? By Hans Krohn (23 June 2005) "Got Nothing Better To Do With Your Time?" Almost every flight simulation enthusiast has been asked this rather annoying question -- usually by people do not really care to understand the fascination this hobby holds for so many. I have piloted virtual planes since the early days of flight simulators. Back then, no amount of goodwill would convince people around me that the crude graphics on the screen of my computer had any similarity with real flight. But I saw things differently. Since my very first encounter with flight simulation I have embraced the possibility of flying whenever I want, and wherever I want -- and to walk away from every landing! Ten years ago, I decided to make a clear case of addiction even worse by starting the construction of a home cockpit. In today's world, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of people out there who have decided to do the same thing. There are now dedicated forums on the internet, specialized companies providing plug-and play solutions, and even sim builders' congresses. But back in the mid-nineties, home built flight simulators were very, very rare. Their creators were either admired as brave pioneers of leading edge technology, or sneered at for wasting their time on an impossible task. This is the story of how I started this hobby. It describes some of the highlights, but also the problems I encountered during the long building process. I may also explain how a project, started a decade ago, today is still the source of great satisfaction. The Idea It started one day in December of 1995. I was scanning magazines at a newspaper stand. Looking through an American PC Games Magazine, I saw an add for a home cockpit kit, 3-dimensional and with real panels and buttons. "Fly like the real pilots do!" the title screamed. For some time I had already toyed with the idea of having switches and buttons arranged around my monitor to enhance the feeling of being there when taking off into the virtual skies. But this looked even better: Sitting inside a cockpit, joystick and throttles mounted left and right, and a monitor in front of me. I was infected. The attempt to contact the makers of that cockpit kit was unsuccessful. It seemed they had gone out of business before even starting it: My faxes and phone calls remained unanswered. So I had to take things into my own hands. I estimated that it would take me roughly one year to plan, design and build my own cockpit simulator. Had I known how wrong I was. It took months of painfully slow research in the fledging flight sim forums at CompuServe to get first answers. I was told to talk to two persons: Ralph Robinson from R&R Electronics and to a guy whose name I don't remember at Thrustmaster. Ralph is the mastermind behind the programmable Input/Output card EPIC and Thrustmaster at that time produced the MDF components and fiberglass outer shell of a F-16 cockpit. The trouble was to get all this stuff to Alma Ata, Kazakhstan, where I lived in those years. But there are no hurdles too high and no rivers too wide for the dedicated cockpit builder - I already mentioned the infection, didn't I? I solved the transport problem and soon enough I was happily joining MFD plates. Within a few days my apartment had one usable room less, but now it contained a construction (my friends called it a contraption) you could sit in and feel, well "like the real pilots do"? Not quite - but it was a beginning. I soon realized that the Thrustmaster cockpit concept did not fully suit my needs. The panels were large, flat planes that - even when covered with switches and buttons - would still look rather flat and uninspiring. So I started to extensively rework the whole structure to make it look more like real cockpit interiors. I integrated joystick, throttle and rudder pedals, made space for additional monitors and -- anticipating the ever increasing weight of the setup - reinforced all joints. The Design Process Next I sat down and started to think what all those empty spaces inside the cockpit should contain. A glass cockpit was no option - years would pass before Project Magenta became available. So I simply looked at all the flight sim programs I used at that time (MS-FS4, ATP, Falcon3, Flanker and Tornado) and drew up a list of the commands I used most frequently in all of them. I decided to build a generic cockpit that I could use to fly a Cessna, a Tornado or any other plane. As a result, my panels would have a weapons control unit and a King autopilot sitting peacefully next to each other - everything crammed into the replica of an F-16 cockpit. The panel design process was a flight of fancy. Using Corel Draw I invented what I thought I needed, trying to combine form and function. Since I had no real airplane nearby as a reference, I used photos. But above all, I used my imagination. Even today, after a major upgrade that made my cockpit look much less generic and closer to the real thing, I still tell visitors: "If I were an aircraft engineer, this is how I would build a cockpit!". Complications So far, things had been relatively simple; mainly pleasant carpentry and PC based design work. Progress was fast and the results were visible almost immediately. That changed when a DHL parcel arrived, containing the electronics I would use as an interface between the cockpit and my PC: the EPIC card and modules. While scanning the manual I got the distinct feeling that this was way over my head: diodes, data leads and modrows, binary encoded rotaries, a C-like programming language - to me it all sounded like Chinese. But people on the net, among them Ralph Robinson, told me it would work and that others before me had mastered the skills needed to tame the EPIC beast. I read the manual from cover to cover, re-read it and than re-read it again. Slowly I started to understand the concept. But now I wanted hard evidence that EPIC really works: I soldered a pushbutton to a data lead and a modrow cable and wrote my first lines of epl code. And yes, it did work! Each press of that button produced the letter "g" in notepad, and only moments later - after firing up Flight Simulator - the same buttonpress raised my landing gear. Sounds like no big deal, but all who have gone through this process will agree: Success in making these first steps with a new and almost alien technology creates a feeling of euphoria and achievement that is hard to describe - and even harder to relay to others: Imagine that freshly soldered button hanging in the air over your workspace, suspended from its two wires. And me, with a sparkle of elation in my eyes (and looking more than ever like the mad scientist), pointing happily at a simple letter on the screen. But now I had my proof: the buttons worked, and after some more soldering, so did the LEDs and the 7-segment displays. Now it was time to get serious. Hard Labor By now, more parcels had arrived, containing different flavors of pushbuttons, toggle switches, rotaries, displays, diodes and of course wire, lots of wire. It was time to put it all together. What followed was hard labor. Making all these panels I had dreamt up kept me soldering for months, many months (remember, only 12 of these make a year!). It often left me cross-eyed, tired and sometimes wondering if it all was worth the effort. Progress was small, often imperceptible. I think it is at this stage where so many cockpit projects fail. No matter how big the enthusiasm in the projecting phase, it is during the panel building when builders have to muster all their determination and patience to keep going on and to finish the job. It became clear that my original 1 year estimate for completing the simulator was obsolete. 18 months had passed and I was nowhere near the end. In those days, there was clear and present danger for my project. But I was determined not to end up with a room full of useless scrap. To ensure long term motivation I started to take long, planned breaks. During these, I dedicated my time to other activities and cleared those panels from my mind and the soldering vapors from my lungs. And once I finished a panel, I connected and used it. I drew fresh energy from flight testing each new component. It really helped to renew my determination when I felt the new buttons click under your fingertips and something happened in my cockpit that - only weeks before - had required keyboard interaction. The Code Unfortunately, wires and switches are only one part of the story. In order to make them perform their function within the simulator, programming is needed. I had never written a single line of coding before, and for all I knew, Basic, C or FORTRAN could as well have been the names of Saturn's moons. So I was off to a rather difficult start. I already knew that the EPIC stuff worked in principle; now it was time to go deeper. Using the cryptic EPIC manual and more than a little help from friends on the net, I made my first attempts to write real code. And the old saying proved itself again: "You can do it, if you put your mind to it!" Weeks later, after many sleepless nights and countless moments of total frustration, I began to see the slow but steady development of my programming skills. Suddenly, the press of a button could do more than just produce a character on the screen. After discovering variables, flags and "If - Then" functions (and the fact that they can be nested), there was no stopping me. I happily programmed the nights away and my code became so intricate that I was usually unable to understand the next day what I had written just one night before. But I started to program my own logic into my panels, and I found that to be a very enjoyable creative process. The convenient thing about programming is that it can be done everywhere, as long as there is a computer around. I found myself writing code for my cockpit on airplanes or sitting in my hotel room in the lonely evenings of business trips. The Never-Ending Story It took me 3 years to finish the cockpit - the first stage of the building process, to be precise. There it was in my workroom, with an imposing footprint of six by six feet. I had built all those switches and displays into their panels. I had three monitors in front of me, displaying a synchronized view of the outside world. 4000 lines of EPIC code (no pun intended) made it all work. The stage was set for happy flying. But it did not take me long to realize that I was not done yet. I wanted a full enclosure. When flying at FL35, few things are more distracting than turning your head and looking at your neighbor mowing his lawn. I decided to construct a jetfighter-like canopy and to enclose the three monitors, using plywood. Again, I underestimated the time this would take, but one year later it was done. Then Project Magenta with its true to life glass cockpit instruments came along and I knew that another upgrade was about to happen: More PC's, more monitors, and a completely reworked cockpit interior. Throw in a new EPIC card (USB now) and the rewriting of my EPL code, and the inclined reader will understand how another 2 years came to pass. Last year I moved to a new location, so the simulator had to be disassembled. After arriving at the new place I was about to put it all back together again -- but then I hesitated. With everything taken apart - wasn't this the perfect occasion for some long due upgrades? Only 12 months later it was done. New instruments and panels grace a cockpit that looks more sophisticated than ever. It was during this year when I noticed with a mixture of shock and nostalgia that none of the first generation panels survived the various upgrades of the last decade. But aviation is changing, and so is the technology behind homebuilt cockpits. The temptation to make yet another modification is always present. But for the next couple of years I plan to spend my time using this amazing piece of equipment sitting in my workroom. No more upgrades. Or maybe just some very, very small ones. Here I will end the account of my cockpit building endeavor, and it is a good moment to make a point: For those who get into this hobby, it is not only about enhancing the flight sim experience - it is also about the creative act of building something unique. . . and to see how far you can get. And no, I've got nothing better to do with my time! Hans Krohn www.hanskrohn.com

How To Fly The Biggest Desk In The Office By Peter Kodis Figure 1 Introduction. What Are We Talking About It's a dream of a lot of our fellow simmers to have a cockpit of their very own, to fly to places and make this virtual adventure have more reality to it. Many simmers have built cockpits and submitted them to the web and they look great, but have a price tag in the hundreds or thousands of dollars with multiple computers or various displays or the use of a real aircraft body or one fellow using a car chassis to make a 747...wow, a car! Some cockpits are of the Boeing jet style while others are a single seat jet fighter but while fitting the need of the simmer the limitations are greater and I find it a theme with many simulators that will not bend to various needs. I'm basically a boneyard pilot meaning I fly aircraft that are outdated and used for non VA roles such as fire bombers, bug sprayers and just vintage charter flights. These aircraft can span from a Douglas DC-3s all the way up to the Douglas C-133s...that's a pretty large range of aircraft that also includes Lockheed Connies and C-130s, Beech 18s and the Cessna 400 series. Building a cockpit that fits all the roles of a multi-role simmer becomes a matter of just dropping the authenticity and just accepting it's going to be a virtual cockpit... Figure 2 Where Do I Start? Start With No Money! My adventure started with a dream and the spark that ignited this mission was when my wife gave my computer desk to my son. She offered to buy me a new desk but my response was "NO", how about I make my own desk. It will look like an airplane but it's really a desk. The response was "in the basement", with an additional demand that "it will cost nothing to build too". Wow, is that a tall challenge to beat. Not really. My cockpit is completely made from salvaged wood from pallets and packing materials that by traveling through any industrial park can be found. Besides wood there is copper pipe for the yoke, a few bungy cords, variable resistors from a tape deck and old video equipment, a doorway rug, a speaker from the stereo, sheet rock screws and house paint. Have you ever watched "Junkyard Wars" on The Learning Channel....Here's the parts just build it! Make an airplane cockpit. I've started, but I'm in need ideas? Go look at airplanes! Figure 3 First thing is to get an idea and the best way is to visit an aircraft junk yard. There is one at my local airport in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and Albert Audette the President of Aircraft Repairs Unlimited took my picture along with some fine items to study (Figures 1-2). Oh, would I love to buy one and take it home but besides the size and price they are impossible to fit into the basement. Albert told me he does sell them to flightsimmers for cockpits but it's a lot of work. I agree, as I crawled through some old Cessna 172s and Piper Aztecs and sat in these carcasses. I got the feel of the dream...the feel is claustrophobic. That's the secret, it's not the computer displays, the multiple LAN fed Pentiums or if you run FS2000 or Fly! it's the tightness of the cockpit. In WWII student pilots sat in a box and were spun around and had a few gauges...it worked then. Also look on the web. The main thing is that many simmers think these real world simulators are these complex video worlds where in fact they are a training device and can be as simple as a panel with switches. Here's a picture (Figure 3) from the USCG maintainance facility for the HU-25 Falcon. As you can see there are no multiple monitors or virtual worlds to look at; the main thing is to get the pilot to figure out how everything works. No overkill, just the basics. Figure 4 Figure 5 OK, I had an idea but it seems difficult to build? Expect the unexpected! My project started out as a Cessna 402 cockpit and slowly just began to lose the plan of design quickly. The center section is the 402 in design but as the windshields went in it became more like a DC-3 (Figure 4). As the sides went in it got more Connie or DC-6 in size. Basically, keep in mind it's a desk and seeing I fly all surplus aircraft it's now just a cockpit with no real theme except to run sim programs. Figure 6 Where do you get the controls? Make them yourself. The yoke is purely based on looking at aircraft in the boneyard. This is the heart of any sim. It's not the software or the plane. If you have a bum joystick the flight of fantasy becomes just movements of a object in 3D space. I have found no joystick, analog or digital, that fits my needs. You can't make plastic act like steel...no plastic box will replace a yoke sticking out of a dash board. My yoke is made out of copper pipe, "not steel", because it was easy to solder and the fittings were left over from a plumbing job. It is mounted through the dash and is linked to potentiometers through various linkages. Figure 5 is a picture of the setup. It looks like a mechanical nightmare and it really was. Besides using bungy cords for tension the linkage has to be tweaked so the yoke works correctly. The wire job uses 24 gauge wires and is fused. The reason is I have had a short circuit years ago with a Packard Bell system and a home brew joystick. The voltage regulator on the sound card proceeded to supply 5 amps of current to the wires and they burned (big time!). Using 1/4 amp fuses and thin wire should if any short happens be quick and break. The drawback is I've had a few flights cut short because the wire broke from the yoke movements. On the yoke it also becomes a trick of dressing the wires with a little slack for movement. The throttle is a wipe control from a piece of video equipment but it's basically a pot on its side with a T handle and a tension brake. This is not to scale running a twin or four engine bird but for simplicity it works. For the purist I'll say the on board computer running the engine management system only requires one throttle. It will be on future Airbuses probably. The rudder pedals (Figure 6) are made from a Mad CatZ pedal unit and are expanded with external rudder pedals. The Mad CatZ uses 2-50K pots in a cross wiring pattern. Many simmers over think this by adding linkage or trying to move one pot. The Mad CatZ has each pedal with one pot and as you push each pedal it increases or decreases from the 50K ohms measured center. So actually the left pedal goes from 50K to 10K ohms if pushed and the right goes from 50K to 80K ohms if pushed. Figure 7 The sound system consists of a big speaker under the dash for engine rumble and the PC speakers act as high end. The rumble speaker located above the pedals gets its sound from an old stereo amp mounted in the center console; being all plywood construction the speaker vibrates through the whole cockpit and is picked up in the (copper) yoke...try that with a plastic joystick. Using the BIGBIRD sound file makes Connie flights come alive. Putting it all together, the floor is a giant shipping pallet with furniture wheels added and other disassembled pallets slowly built the outer structure. All the salvaged plywood supplied to build the seats and another little neat device that the sim world needs, the caddy (Figure 7). How many of you have the stick on the desk or even stick it between your legs and try to shoot down BF-109s in CFS? Pretty tiring! I have used these for years now. Basically build a box to mount the joystick on, put it in front of your desk chair and build another for the throttle too. The center console (Figure is the heart of the unit and supports all the shelving to hold the monitors, computers and other equipment. The boxy construction and 2x4s have a purpose though. Possibly in the future 2-3 computers will be connected though a LAN system and run front and side view monitors and basically though not correct the heavy construction allows the mounting of SVGA monitors for these views. Are We There Yet? No Only Half Way! This project is not even close to being done but rather is an ongoing project. At any time I can work on it or shut it off and walk away for a week; it does not spoil or need gas. The keyboards (Figure 9) are mounted over head and work out great for flightsim use...always a button over your head to push. The yoke has a piece of plexiglas to hold FAA sectional charts and a magazine holder is to the left to hold all my other charts. Once again this may or may not be correct but you can always reach over and pull an FAA airport directory or chart out in flight. Add a old Cessna microphone and a head set and a piece of pipe insulation across the dash and she starts to look like an airplane desk. Figure 8 Figure 9 The roof center panel has switches and lights and will operate in the future but for now it's more ornamental. It comes down to just building it...the desk is 40 inches wide and 60 inches long without the seat (basically a double pallet), so it's not really larger than a office desk and stands no higher then the back of a computer center. It has wheels so you can move it to vacuum behind it or remove panels for maintenance. And by the end of this how to you may think it's not authentic or it's not a 747 but I never intentioned it to be anything more than an airplane desk. Pete Kodis straker@flightsim.com Cockpit web site: http://home.attbi.com/~fs-cockpitsimulator Bone yard pictures and flying old planes in FS sims: http://home.attbi.com/~fs-boneyard