Author: Markus

Finished sideplanks and reworked dome planks

Today we have archieved a lot. We have finished the planks on both sides.

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As well as made some corrections to the dome planks, which meant that all the existing plates had to be removed and replaced with new ones. During this change the map lights and the corresponding light switch were moved to a new place and seperated from the speakers.

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Therefore in the sidewalls the map light panel was built in. The chart light is a potentiometer and will be used to change the brightness of the CPT and FO Screens independant.

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Also the last window on the Captain side was closed to reduce the distractions from the side 🙂 FO window will follow.

The handset microphone was also placed into its final position. The microphone has one push button on itself, now you can also communicate headset free during the flight. If you push the button the PTT sequence via FSUIPC will be transfered to the vpilot client.

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Next step is to finish the last gap in the ceiling.

First Officer sidewall and charts holder

Today we have accomplished a lot again. The full first officer sidewall was built.

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Also my new checklist and cardholder on the glare shield was mounted. I bought it from simworld in Poland. Shipment was very fast and has an excellent quality.

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The second seat was continued to get finished. The arm rests are still missing and a backplate will be attached during the next weeks.

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On the todo list the next steps are to finish the planks around the shell. A new CDU is also on the list as well as the chart light panels, therefore my light switches will get moved from the overhead to the sidewalls. And the FO MIP should be finished and connected to the joystick cards for the Main DU switches on th FO side.

And last week I drilled the holes for the headset of the pilot. So the headset can now be connected to some extension cables and can be stored away when not needed during the flight, because a handmicrophone is on the way to me, but this will be covered in a seperate post.

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Cabin Announcements Speaker and Captains Sidewall

During the last weeks I have built into the cockpit 2 small round speakers to hear the cabin announcements from the back and not from the speakers in the front.

Therefore also an audio cable was placed through the room to have the cabin announcements started from the PC which is running Prosim A.F.A.S or the great freeware tool from Oliver FSCrew 2010.

Also we have finished the sidewall on the captains side. We have reworked the tiller construction and placed the two amplifiers from ATC and Cabin into the sidewall.   2015-04-15 19.07.03

Next on the to do list: finish second seat and the first officer sidewall.

New Hardware

As my current hardware for the Flightsimulator PC is rather “old”, I have bought it in 2007 and upgraded the graphic card in 2009, I bought a new one.

Its a current state of the art PC with the following hardware specs:

 

  • Intel i5-4690K
  • 16GB HyperX Savage RAM
  • Nvidia GTX970 Palit Jetstream 4GB
  • Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming 3 Motherboard
  • 2x 512GB SSD

new-PC

all in all I have now 12 USB connectors on the PC (8 on the back and 4 in the front)

USB

 

Current I am in setting up FSX with all my sceneries and the PROSIM Configuration (joystick mapping, FSUIPC settings, etc.)

I am also not satisfied with the performance of FSX with the current configuration. I am tweaking and searching for the moment.

Later a move to P3D is also planned.

 

Seat update

I can show you a short update from my seat, which I built as a prototype.

The arm rests can be raised and lowered. The seat height can only be changed when the bolts are removed.

The seat is not mounted on j-rails, so it can be moved with the rolls in all directions.

Still missing is the fabric cover. I am searching for a nice cover that meets the grey color.

seat (Custom)

Tiller, Captain Sidewall and Shell lifting

Today we have started on the captain sidewall.

We figured out that it won’t be easy to build this because I havn’t thought about this one in the planning of the shell… So basically we have not the required space that we would need to fit the sidewalls. But the whole structure can not be changed anymore and we have to live with that.

We will figure out a compromise of reality and what we can build…

So far we got the following:

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The tiller will be removed and the plate will be replaced as it is not good enough to stay in the cockpit. Current the tiller is mounted just for testing.

Also we lifted the whole construction of the overhead 4 cm higher to archive more space between the glareshield and the overhead. The error happened in the year 2009 when we built the MIP. There we didn’t stuck to the measurements from markuspilot.com and an error was included in the MIP size. It is 3cm to high. When we started in late 2014 the shell we havn’t measured the MIP and we started withe the real measurements from the manual. Also there we made a 1.5cm mistake that will sum up to 4.5cm smaller view out of the front window.

This error was corrected now and looks like this:

We took also the structure that we used to lift as our above window line. Not 100% accurate but I can live with that.

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Servo card changed

During the last week I have changed my Opencockpits Servo card to an Pololu Servo card, because I needed more than 6 servo outputs.

So I grabbed a 18 servo output card from Pololu.

Pololu Servo Card

Also the card is natively supported by Prosim, therefore no SIOC is need anymore.

The card was connected and worked as described. All Servo assignments needed to be redone in Prosim and a short testflight was successfull.

I can fully recommend the card to anyone who is looking for a servo interface.

Aft. Overhead built in and in use

During this week I have finished the aft. overhead with the support structure and built it into the cockpit, where it belongs.

All indicators were assigned in SIOC to their variable and merged with the configuration in ProSim as well as all switches / buttons were assigned. Only 4 of them (IRS Keypad 3,6,9 and CLR) have been connected to another Joystick card from Leo Bodnar to the Coolie hat switch. This time I recognized that ProSim can not read those inputs natively as already known on the Prosim support forum. I took therefore a workaround. I have assigned the variables 5330 to 5333 in FSUIPC to the switches and Prosim reads the Offset from FSUIPC as an input for the switch. This is working great.

Finally here is a picture with the built in aft. overhead.

Aft. Overhead

The next steps are to finish the FO MIP and put it back in the cockpit as well as the shell will be continued.

Aft. Overhead wiring done – All lights on please!

Yesterday I have finished the wiring of the afterwards overhead panel. I have now connected all switches, LEDs and my backlight for the keypad.

A first short test looks very promising. Attached you will find some pictures of the panel.

The indicator text panels are current not glued, this will be done in the next days, so they don’t appear 100% aligned on the photos below.

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The next step is to mount it into the Cockpit and program all switches as well as the indicators.

Building a 737-800 Homecockpit [OE-LNJ]