Building a 737-800 Homecockpit [OE-LNJ]
using ProSim737
![Building a 737-800 Homecockpit [OE-LNJ]](https://737cockpit.info/wp-content/files/2016/05/Header_6.jpg)
Also the next panel was now retrofitted with backlights. The panel sits above the Ground Power and Bus Switching Panel which I did some days ago. As this had only 3 switches and LEDs it was a rather simple one to do.
And again it looks fantastic. Sadly some color came of with the screw, but I will replace it in the near future with a new front plate.
During the last weeks I have finished the re-wiring and backlight of the Ground Power and Bus Switching Panel.
Fist it was removed from the overhead panel and all wired need to be cut, as no connectors were installed in 2009.
Once removed the panel was in the refitted with 12V LED strips.
and connectors where installed in the flightdeck as well on the panels to reconnect it more easily.
The LED boxes where replaced to black ones, that the new backlight won’t shine through.
To finally reassemble it in the overhead it “only” had to be reconnected. But there the issue started…
The place behind the panel was too small to fit the new connectors in, because back in 2009 we tried a backlight through a plexiglass screen, but this was not working as expected, but there was already the full overhead built. So I needed to get some place. So I have taken some “heavy equimpent” and drilled some holes in the plexiglass.
Finally finished and it looks very good.
What I forgot now to mention was the thing that stared to whole “operation”. The perfect looking APU gauge was the initial driver of the retrofit. As all my retrofitted gauges, also this was bought from customsimparts.
3 years ago I have started a retrofit to my now 10 years old overhead panel. I continued now with the fuel panel, therefore it had to be cut of all of the wiring and rewire it to add backlight and a new gauge from Tom customsimparts.com.
Another step for more reality 🙂
Next on the plan: The power Source Panel with an updated APU gauge.
During my last flights I got asked by an Instagram follower why my flightdeck is so dark when flying in daylight (in the Simulator).
I really never gave a thought on this. But as I started thinking about the question I also had (couple of minutes later) an idea how to solve it.
You have to know that my flightdeck is located in the basement of our house. Therefore its darker, as only one window is installed in the room (it was intended to be dark, as it was planned during house planning and building that the flightdeck will be there).
But to overcome the issue during day flights I have started to install a dim able LED strip on the captains window, below the MIP and on the first officer window. It is regulated via a dimmer manually to match the current scenery daylight.
To get this done some work needed to be done to make sure that the light will not blend in the face. So I attached some painted wooden bars on the MIP structure.
The LED strips need to be cut and re-soldered to have one strip run throught the whole flightdeck.
To the honest, it look quite good 🙂
Here are 3 comparison pictures.
Today,10 years ago, I finished the work on the first LED lights.
From there – the Overhead in small.
via this:
to here – a full size fixed simulator.
During the 10 years of building I learnt a lot, especially that behind of those are always computers and software which can and will always have issues. Broken CPU coolers, crashed HDDs, performance issues with the application, network issues, etc.
But, if all is working as it should be, it all makes huge fun to run such a simulator. In the last 3 years I was more focused on getting things “as real as it gets”. So I invested a lot of my time to record, cut and edit cabin announcements to make them sound good in my setup.
A lot of thanks goes to my father, without him and his knowledge of building and forming wood, it would not be possible. Danke Papa 🙂
I created a short video which takes us through 10 years of cockpit building.
Enjoy!
https://youtu.be/dTVLWPzSiw8
As Austrian changed there design back in 2018, I took the time now to refresh my flightdeck as well with the new “Austrian” logo.
A couple months ago I had to change the potentiometer of the tiller, because is was defect. After a couple of flights I noticed that the steering drags to the left and does not center. So the first impression was that the potentiometer or the input card has an issue. But after some hours of trying to fix it, it got clear that it is a full mechanical issue.
I removed the Tiller handle and during that process the locker mechanism got destroyed… So I had to replace it with a 4mm screw (left).
And on the other side the locking mechanism was not strong enough to hold on to the potentiometer shaft. I removed the screw, drilled a hole in the shaft and reattached the screw, which is now holding the shaft tight.
After some stationary tests I have reassembled it. Now it works perfect and is finally fixed.
During the years of using ProSim I always had running the Prosim Displays with 2 instances. One for the Captains PFD and ND and a second one for the First Officers PFD and ND.
After some chat with a ProSim Developer (Alex) who is responsible for the D2D integration and much more, he pointed out to me that it is better that each display is running its independent instance. Therefore the PFD will not slow down if the ND shows too much data and struggles.
So I took the time to reconfigure my setup, at least for the PFD and ND on both sides. Each display is now running a own ProSimDiplay.exe instance.
And indeed it feels smoother.
During the last year’s I have used this wet Compass solution.
Now I found the post of René on the Prosim forum explaining how he is interfacing his own built wet Compass. Quite simple to be honest. Take an Arduino board (eg. this one on Amazon) and his own built compass, it’s nearly plug and play.
The Arduino board is converted to a mobiflight board with the firmware modification. Required software can be found here.
I have mounted the wet compass in its position and as there are also LEDs included I connected them to the responsible switch. Quite nice product.
Thanks René. Get with him in touch trough the Prosim Forum to get an price with shipping to your country.
Shipping was absolutely fine and René is very fast in responding and providing the asked information. I can recommend this product if you are looking for a wet Compass solution.
A long time I have searched how to move the gsx menue away from the curved projection screen for convenience. Now I found a solution hinted in the Prosim forum. A simple lua script from Pete Dowson is the solution. This lua script generates all kind of stuff on another machine via WideFS. You can select between Weather updates, all text, all menus etc. So I tried it and this is the result.
Via the FMC and ProsimUtils you can control the GSX menue and now the menue is displayed as an overlay on the lower EICAS.
The only drawback is the you have to start WideFS on this machine as the last software to allow the overlay. This needed some adoption of my startup routine on this machine. But finally the captain and the first officer can see and interact with the menue. Sadly it’s not touchable, as my lower EICAS is a touchscreen.