I just wanted to say thank you to those of you who are working so hard to make the dream of flying an F-14 become a reality for so many of us. I am very much looking forward to building my sim-pit from the designs a number of you have put together. While I have no design skills to allow me to create & share something with you all, I can not post something here without providing some information that may prove to be useful for those of you who are more skilled.
I came across this site while searching for more info on the F-14 cockpit: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA327438
After opening the link, select "View the full text of this report" (providing a link vs the pdf as I do not wish to become another war thunder player "leaking" info I should not be, so I figured if you can't access the link, you probably shouldn't see what's inside anyway..."
If you're weary to click the link, I came across it by googling "F-14 spin simulator" and selected the "Defense Technical Information Center" result. It is a 256 page report on building an F-14 spin simulator. It doesn't appear to have any dimensions to necessarily help you with your build, but it does seem to provide some useful information & graphics. I've scrolled through a couple times now and I believe there should be info that could aid in the creation of our own replica pits.
Some key pages I noticed (pdf page#, not report page #):
119: Figure 21 - F-14 Aircraft Cockpit Panel
121: Multipurpose Cockpit Crewstation Specifications (not sure if this is useful as it may not be F-14 specific)
130: VDI Specifications (Display Screen Size: 5 inches x 5 inches)
132: HSD Specifications (Display Screen Size: 5 inches wide x 6.5 inches high)
136: Stick / Rudder Control Loader System Specifications
152-163: Instrumentation & Panels deemed necessary for spin simulation by test pilots (not all instruments & panels were needed for the tests). These are said to be to scale, but upon printing & measuring, I found them to be smaller (the panels I printed were 5.5 inches wide vs 5.75 inches wide as they should be)
I hope this proves to be useful to someone!
Also, for those of you who feel like you won't be able to build your own cockpit yourself as you don't have the "necessary" tools to do so (CNC, laser cutter, 3D printer...), look to see if you have something called a "makerspace" near you (may have other names as well). I recently learned of these and found I have one not far from me where they have all sorts of tools that will allow me to make my dream become a reality. They even offer classes to help you learn how to operate the machines and how to use the software to actually create what you designed.
Thank you again to everyone here helping to make my dream of flying an F-14 become a reality!
-Steve
