A340-300 Specifications??

[AussieWonder]

G'day guys-

I am very keen on building my own A340-300 flight simulator.I have some questions that i hope you can answer.

I am planning to build it in a room that is 2.1 metres high and has a length of 4.1 metres.Would this be a big enough room to do it in?I dont know the exact specifications i would need for a A340 simulator as i cant find any hard and fast specs of the cockpit.Also is it a wise idea to have like a wooden base or something cut out to the maximum space of the simulator you are building for a base?

I have read some of the stickys on this forum and they have helped but hopefully i can get some of my questions answered, thankyou :)

[Trevor Hale]

I can't give you the outside dimensions of the A340, but what I can tell you is we all manage to work with the space we have. For instance, one of our builders is building a 737NG in the top part of his attic, so if you want 100% scale size, you will need a room much bigger then you think.

My Dassault is aprox 7 feet wide at the widest point. I have built it on an 8' X 8' base on casters. My room has an 8'5 ceiling, and that is almost too tight. The room I have installed the sim in is 18 feet long and 14 feet wide. and the 8 foot by 8 foot base is tight in there. I need to be able to get to all sides of the sim to work on it.

Just keep in mind, 7 foot cockpit with 3.5 feet on each side of it is a 14 foot room. so if you were to draw that out, you would see it is tight.

I would immagine that the inside dimensions of the A340 would be in the neighbourhood of 8.5 feet wide and about 7 foot high.

So if you were to allow for 6 inch walls, you would need a minimum room width of 9 feet. ideally you would install it in a room 15 feet wide.

the length depends on your projection method. you may need to have a longer room to allow for a larger projection screen.

Anyway, hope that helps.

Trev

[Matt Olieman]

Here's some of my dimensions:

Cockpit shell is 8 feet long and 9 feet wide at the back. I've got some pics in the gallery. Here's one of them.

http://www.mycockpit.org/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=102&cat=528

[AussieWonder]

Thanks guys that helps a lot.Thankyou matt for those measurements.In regards to hooking the systems up and all that i am pretty right.The hardest thing for me to do is to figure out the dimensions of the cockpit and how to assemble it and what materials to use in relation to the actual cockpit :) im glad i found this site however and hope to become a regular contributor. :)

[AndyT]

Man you guys are SPOILED! I have a total of 32 x 65 inches for my entire cockpit! I can go about 5 feet high if I need, but even that is pushing farther than I should.

[Bob Reed]

Thats ok Andy. For 5 years my cockpit was not allowed to go over 45" wide by about 32" in depth! Thats all the room I had... BUT I still had my cockpit. Nothing like i have now but I flew it for hours. I will have to post some pics of what it looked like way back when. The point is use what you have and be creative and you can still build something that you enjoy! Reminds me I need to finish that little write up I was doing on "space" to kinda give what I have learned over the years about it...

[Trevor Hale]

Guys, Guys, Guys.. I learned long ago, Ask yourselves "WHY"

Why don't I have more room, 90% of you will say because this is the ammount of room my wife let me have. You all need to stand your ground. If that room isn't big enough, grab a sledge hammer and make it bigger... :)

Good Luck!

Trev

[Matt Olieman]

Either that, or move to a bigger place.... I've always said "My house is not big enough for my project" :)

[Trevor Hale]

Matt,

I can't remember who is was, one of our members was working on a real 737 throttle quadrant, and I remember laughing to myself, because he was working on it at the kitchen table. That guy had his wife trained, she let him keep his project in the kitchen. We should ask him for some tips.

All I know, is If I brought part of the sim and put it on the kitchen table, I would be sleeping on the sofa for many many nights.. :cool:

My theory is, we all need space for our hobbies, and your space needs to grow to the size of the hobby. and your 100% right, sometimes there just isn't enough room.

Bestr regards,

Trev

[Matt Olieman]

That reminds me of something.... The AVSIM conference at READING, PA. My wife went with me. Peter Cos (FDS) made a presentation and was using some of my photos as an example. I was PROUD, and asked my wife to sit in with me at the presentation.

When it came time for Peter to show some of the Pics, one of them was of all my "NEW" panels spread across the dining room table. Needless to say... I got a PUNCH in my shoulder, with a "You said you would put your STUFF on the dining room table." OOPS!!! I got busted.... in public :(

Looking back at it... it was funny :)

[Trevor Hale]

That's really funny. Some of the things we try to get away with :)

[AndyT]

Well my wife and I live at work and we only have a very small amount of space for us and all her stuff, so I'm limited to a very small area to build my sim in.
The only training thats likely to happen around here is the dog learning to do the dishes....:lol:

[James Twomey]

Matt,

Gosh that is so funny.... I'm very lucky that I have a wife that feeds this beast of a hobby of mine. Only thing is that it now is taking up half my garage! Speaking of which, I just uploaded pictures of my latest completion point. Now if I just can convince the "misses" to let me dig a trench in the garage for a hydralic platform. LOL :lol:

Regards,
James Twomey