Show Us Your GA Pit!

[klm320]

Hello Alex,
Thanks for your comments.

Same here, been looking for weeks to find different cockpit lay outs to decide what to do

You are correct about the plexiglass, broke in thousand pieces (so to say)…MDF works great. My current thickness is 4mm which is fine for projecting gauges (I think), they don’t look too deep now. Will stay with projecting for the time, hardware gauges will follow once the other parts are finished.
And yes, It will be a generic setup…kinda hard decision though… I was absolutely planning to make a mooney cockpit for 100% but Getting the correct gauges and exact measurements was quite hard. I therefore decided to get the speed of the mooney with the gauges of Cessna.
In the end, the fact you can physically look at your panel and control the aircraft via hardware is (for me) the ultimate goal.

I currently have the idea to put the engine instruments on the co-pilot side. I have decided to make “the best of two worlds” since there are instruments from both aircraft that I like. The anunnciator panel of the mooney for example, is something I really like. The panel dimensions are from Cessna…

The yoke is another story. I currently use the saitek yoke which will also be implemented in the first version of the panel. I will create a space for that so it will fit inside the panel. You can see the space in the picture left of the tumble switches. A rectangle is drawn there which represents the yoke “cut out”. I know that it will be to low in that case and it will take up to much space (to be realistic), but I want to use the new Flight illusion yoke once it is available and I have the money offcourse.

William

[No Longer Active]

Hey great to hear your sim is in full swing.

You mention that you would like to buy the FI yoke, I have a funny feeling that this will set you back around 1000 euros, the simkits alone is 500 and that doesn't do half as much as what the FI yoke does, so better start saving the pennies.

A generic sim is usually a safe bet as you have nothing to compare against, you simply have what you what in your pit without the hassle of having to replicate a certain layout or scheme for instance.

Take the Cessna for example. The Cessna 172 looks simple in terms of gauge arrangements etc, but when you come to actually building it, you come in to so many scenarios that actually cause problems, GA builders usually like to build the Cessna 172 (the most popular GA aircraft in the world), and you realise that you cant have a cessna 172 replica by using soft gauges because of the physical layout of the MIP wont allow you to, the Cessna 172 was designed for gauges and not glass technology.

Anyway...

Keep us posted, your doing great, I love the idea of whacking your fuel gauges on the co-pilot side, I have seen that done many times, and especially with MIK's Cessna 150 sim from Finland (check it out: http://www.mik.fi/simulaattori/)

Keep us posted, and good luck...

Alex

[klm320]

just a mini update.
found some time last night to make the panel cut outs

The lower panel is slightly moved to the back compared to the top panel. The idea is to put a "dome" light behind this to create lighting on the lower panel.


and yes, that's a beer in the background, don't have much sparetime so I have to combine some things

@Alex Thanks for the link, looks fantastic! It was indeed the same idea that I had...

William

[No Longer Active]

Wow, Looking good my friend....

I really like the lighting idea, and I am glad that the Malmi Aviation Clubs' sim has given you some inspiration in your build.

Kind Regards and keep us posted!

Cheers...

Alex

[kermit]

Hallo William,
ik heb nog een aantal onderpanelen voor een Cessna te koop evt met een complete set echte zekeringen.
kijk even op underpanels
groet Henk
This is dutch for professionals

[kermit]

Here 2 pictures from last weekend

[klm320]

Looks fantastic Kermit!

really nice you have a full enclosure!

William

[kermit]

Hi,
To get it in the room on the first floor was really easy,
although I had to cut the ceiling from the pit, with a special fibre cuttingdisk.
The cut itself was not even 1 mm, so you wont see it when the ceiling will be mounted again.
The fuselage wasn`t that heavy and with two friends it toke about 5 minutes
As for an understanding wife, Well
Just a joke ,
But you have to have a wife that sees the joy of it, not that she understands though.
small man small toys, big man big toys
greetz

[ibennett]

Hi,

Attached is a photo of my actual cockpit. But I will totally change it into a totally GA cockpit, see the attached drawing of the panel.
I have all parts purchased and I am waiting for the delivery
I will use a Elite AP3000, 4 goflight modules, I allready have the yoke AFCS II and pedals PFC and throttle PFC. I am also waiting for the shippement of a reel glare shield from a DR400 as well as panels from VFR-Cockpit.

I soon will be mounting all of this into my cockpit and will keep on posting as progress continues.

cheers,





AND here is the final cockpit:

DSC_0009.JPG

DSC_0011.JPG

DSC_0013.JPG

I love it

Running x-plane with fully functional gps

CPU i5 ; GPU HD5850 ; 4GB RAM etc... The graphics are superb

It is perfect http://www.mycockpit.org/forums/images/icons/icon6.gif

[GARich]

Here it is - arrived this morning -
Still a lot of work to do:


And will take some time to fit out if I keep getting sidetracked like this:



and this: