War_Pig

Beautiful work! Are all the 3D-printed bits from OpenHornet?

Thanks, but Jself gets all the credit for releasing the files, I just printed what he designed. Awesome of him and to release such a finished design!

It’s been a long project, but my build is finally nearing completion. 173 Button inputs, I have a lot of controls to set up in DCS!

Agreed. Every air boss has a beer belly, it's a requirement of the job.

@Jself I have a question about the Spin Panel: On the parts I printed, it appears there is no way to mount the IR Cool O'Ride/Norm/Off Switch with the nut hidden as you have it, without another piece behind the face panel. What method did you end up using to mount this switch? I see in some of your pictures it has the nut external (visible), and in this one it is hidden; presumably you found a way to secure it and I'd love to know how, if you're willing to share. Thanks!

@OPEC I don't know if you ever figured this out (surely you did, but for anyone else that may be struggling), but there are actually several parts that must be printed from the original Burns UFC folder, for the UFC to be completed. It appears that Jself put his modified files in the UFC folder, and left the files that he did not modify in the Burns original folder, in order to make it clear which parts he was the author of, and which were from Burns perhaps. I only discovered this last night when I thought I was completely finished printing, and began assembly only to feel like a monkey after messing with the UFC for an hour and still being unable to figure out how it went together. Then I perused the Burns UFC thread and found the missing parts. I'm away from home on a trip now, but off the top of my head, they are: UFC Left & Right Sides UFC Top Cover (or something like that, it's a curved piece shaped like a parentheses) HUD Panel (the part that sits below the UFC) It should have been much more clear to me that I was still missing pieces, but I've just been dumbly working my way through the list I made at the beginning of the project, and didn't realize until I started assembly on the main panel. So now I have another day or two of printing to do, lol. How is yours coming along? Any advice for me?

Hi Dogan, welcome to the forum! I think you may misunderstand exactly what the Thrustmaster MFD's are, and so I want to clarify: They are just a USB input device that looks like an MFD bezel; no display at all. In the OP's case, he has done a masterful job of printing out pictures of the screens, cutting them to size, and placing them into the MFDs so that it looks great, but because he (and myself and many others) use VR, having actual displays for the MFDs and other gauges would be redundant. That said, many people have had success finding small display screens to place behind the MFDs (although this specific panel would require extensive modification to allow the display to fit), and outputting displays through 3rd party software, which I can't offer any help with. Just didn't want you to be disappointed. All of that said, I have been printing parts nearly 24/7 for two weeks for this cockpit, and am 80% of the way done. Nearly all of the parts are really well designed and print very well; there's only one part I've had an issue with, fitting the video panel switches into the IFEI I'll have to trim some material. The text has come out awesome on mine. I'm working on assembling it today, and will wire it up once my new soldering iron comes in. Instead of using Arduinos, I opted to go with Leo Bodnar boards, as those are what I'm familiar with and already had one on hand. I'll post some pictures of my finished produce once it's done, but it will be a few more weeks due to work taking up a lot of my time.

I printed this a few days ago, and just want to say THANK YOU for releasing the files. It came out incredibly, what a beautiful mechanism. Now on to wiring it up and building a tilt panel to hold it.

Jself, I just want to say a huge THANK YOU for making the files available, and documenting your build! I am in the process of printing the panel as we speak, and have all the switches and hardware you specified on hand. I completed the CM Panel two nights ago and it turned out beautifully (in my opinion). I'm using a Prusa MK3S+, printing in PLA at 30% infill. One thing I did that seemed to help the text was to use XYZ Compensation in PrusaSlicer to enlarge the parts with text by 0.03mm (along with any parts that they directly connect to, not that it matters too much). This made the text large enough to print well; otherwise some of the text was being omitted in the slicer since it was smaller than my stock nozzle.

Baltic, I just want to say THANK YOU for an incredible DCS experience! I (finally*) completed the campaign last night, after three attempts at the last mission (I still suck at modern air-to-air combat, but am learning!). What a great campaign. You've set the bar high, not just for a DCS campaign, but for any fighter sim single-player experience. Thank you for all you hard work and effort that went into this, and everyone that helped with voice acting and everything else. The sense of atmosphere from the voiceovers, other aircraft doing their work, and the quality presentation of the briefings and kneeboard packages can't be overstated. You should have seen my face when I noticed that during a CSAR (which is not scripted, but seems to be launched IF a certain aircraft is shot down) the CSAR package (not just the switchblade, but the CAP/CAS (RESCORT, I think?) actually launched in-game as fragged, and performed its mission. The only way I noticed is casually flipping through the F2 views on other aircraft to see what was going on during my flight back to the boat. Pretty amazing! All of the missions ran great on my PC, which is great for DCS considering the optimization; for the number of moving parts I would have expected some lag here and there but never got any. I do have some feedback on the first part of the last mission, a couple of items I noticed, but nothing game-breaking by any means: When AAA stars up on the way to the IP, I saw a debug caption that said something like "AAA On". When the SA-15 and SA-2 (I think, I can't remember) become active, I saw some debug messages related to their state. Not a problem by any means, but probably intended to be hidden from the player in the release version. The only 'cheat' I did was adding a centerline tank to my loadout during startup for the last mission. My second playthrough I was running out of fuel on the way out, and felt it was fairly reasonable to bring a little extra gas considering the long, low-level ingress. I hope you don't mind! Awesome work, playing this led to me buying several more of your campaigns, even for aircraft that I previously wasn't specifically interested in (but will be learning now!). This campaign drove me to grow into a (relatively) decent Hornet pilot, capable of cold-starting the aircraft from memory, setting up and using PG weapons, learning A2A refueling, and getting used to operating per my flight plan as fragged. These skills will translate to many other aircraft in DCS, and I appreciate the motivation to put time into developing them. Thanks again for the awesome ride! The only question now is what's next? Maybe a FIGHT FIGHT campaign for the upcoming Marianas map? Looking forward to your Gamblers campaign for F-16/Syria too! *Not to make it sound like this campaign takes forever, on the contrary I was wishing for more, believe me! But work and life (small children that like to "fly with daddy" which precludes any attempt at concentrating on a serious mission) got in my way, meaning it was several months from start to finish.

LOL this thread took a turn... But to answer the original question, 'stealth' (Low Observable) aircraft use radar reflectors and transponders when operating in CONUS and outside of combat zones.

I wish there were both options. As a RL pilot with decades of flying in Knots/Feet, I hate flying in KM/H and Meters. I just can't train my poor dumb brain to catch on to metric units. I apologize for this, and acknowledge the superiority of the metric system, and that this is a personal shortcoming and failure on my end. So why not have both? I wouldn't think it would present too much work to have a cockpit with RU/Metric, ENG/Metric, and ENG/Imperial. Maybe you could even penalize people like me by making the ground crew skip cleaning my cockpit's canopy in unbridled contempt of my inability to convert.

My problem with GR, politics and reputation background aside, is that their videos are way too long and rambling for my attention span. Much of the time it seems like Cap doesn't know how to do something, and there's several minutes of others explaining it to him, and then he repeats what he's learned for your benefit. Sometimes the first way he tries to do something doesn't work and he has to figure out the right way and do it again. The law of primacy (first learned is best learned) means I don't want to have to filter out the garbage info, I just need to be shown how to do it per the procedure and then I can practice that. I would highly recommend Redkite, Laobi's 1-minute DCS series, and Wags videos as your go-to. They're succinct, accurate, and easy to follow. For written material, Chuck's Guides are unparalleled.

I'll give a personal update on this issue: I finally purchased the WinWing Taurus Throttle and Startup Panel and received it quickly, about a month ago. I bought it knowing that the issue existed but that it was still a quality product and likely the best throttle on the market today. Having played with it a month now, I still say that without hesitation. I have it mounted in my cockpit in exactly the correct position relative to my seat that a real hornet would have, or at least as closely as possible based off of a number of references publicly available (some of which are contradictory, requiring a little bit of detective work and interpolation). In VR, the position of the throttle, friction lever, and some of the switches are exactly dead-on, which is amazing. Many of the switches on the start-up panel are moved or migrated slightly to allow for the inclusion of the BATTERY, GEN, and BLEED AIR controls which in reality are on the right side of the cockpit. This is fine and doesn't cause any issue, especially after a few hours of flying develops muscle memory. The throttle and associated 5-way hats are great, absolutely wonderful. The startup panel switches are fine, although they lack the feeling of quality present on the TM Warthog throttle. My instinct tells me this is due to plastic internals, but I haven't taken it apart to lay eyes on the switches themselves, and it's not a problem, just something to know in advance. The ergonomics of the throttle handle is the same: Not really a "problem", but something you should know before you buy. If I hadn't been made aware of this by the OP, I might not have noticed for some time and might have assumed the real hornet was the same way or that something was wrong with me. Once again, I want to say Thank You to the OP for bringing this to light with graphical explanations so that I knew about it up front. Instead of resting my palm on the back as I did the Warthog, I find myself taking a top grip so that my wrist doesn't have to pronate as much. It's not something that affects use, but it may present less than ideal comfort, compared to having a more flat angle that matches the natural position of the palm. That said, I would still recommend the product. The quality and feel of the throttle unit is so far beyond the Warthog, it's actually a more sturdy throttle than the real life jets I fly. Seriously! Would I love for WinWing to revise their design and release a version 2.0 that addressed this? Of course! But I'm a realist, and understand the investment in casting and prototyping this would require. It's unrealistic to expect, considering the niche market of the product.

Minksy has created an incredible set of kneeboards for the hornet. I suggest you start with the quick startup page, which covers everything you need. Then as you continue to learn the aircraft, you will have *everything* you need to know or reference contained in these pages, in a really well-thought out manner. Check them out: https://forums.eagle.ru/topic/266375-fa-18c-kneeboard-suite-updated-21-may-2021/

Awesome work! I'll be watching this, I love your PCB, very nicely done.

Respectfully sir, it is a proven and documented (in pictures in this very thread) fact that the angle is incorrect. Whether or not this presents a noticeable ergonomics problem is up to the individual user, so that may be subjective, but the fact that the angle is backwards is not. No need to get hot under the collar, and no need to whiteknight winwing. No one is doubting the quality of their product, just critiquing one aspect of it, which is what this forum is for.

Thanks for your post, and that picture. That doesn't look as extreme as the drawing makes it. I feel better about it, and will try to order one come April 15th. If I notice any ergonomic problem once I receive it, I'll report back here.

Thanks for that input. If you, or someone else that has the Taurus throttle would be willing to take a top-down picture, I would love to see if there is some kind of difference in how the grips are mounted. It sounds almost like they're different than the Orion. I've scoured the net and can't find a direct top-down pic to shed some light on this.

FZG, thanks for bringing this to everybody's attention. I'm working on a Hornet cockpit, and decided about a week ago to buy the winwing taurus. Today I saw your thread on the other forum and that led me here. I appreciate your insight and presenting the issue pictorially the way you did. I agree that a simple spacer or twist of the throttle levers won't solve the issue because it appears the throttle grips would then hit each other. As a RL professional pilot, I see the ergonomics problem and am worried it might drive me nuts. Considering the price of the throttle, I'm hesitant to pull the trigger now. Can any other owners, perhaps of the Taurus specifically, shed any light on how the throttle feels ergonomically in a cockpit setup?

The Hornet is a jewel of DCS. Indeed, well done ED! Love flying it, and I've loved learning its systems. Thank you for your hard work!

The Turkeybird is a rudder airplane. Learn to love the rudder, and the airplane will love you! Are you using maneuvering flaps?

Awesome kneeboard suite! Thanks for sharing, this will prove incredibly useful to me in learning to be a better Hornet driver.

That's awesome, thanks for sharing! One thing I've done for switches with covers in DCS is use a MOM-ON-ON Switch, so that the cover when closed presses the spring loaded MOM position down. It works great for switches that have two positions, and the cover works as it should without the necessity of an additional switch for the cover. I didn't come up with the idea originally, so I take no credit.

Raven One is the best flight sim experience I've ever had. It feels like you're in the book, or actually a fighter pilot. Very well done, and an incredible experience!