hegykc

Thanks, and yes. Once I sort out some unknowns on this prototype, and perfect the technique, than I can start designing the rest or the instruments for the A-10, Ka-50 and p-51. And all the great aircraft that had been announced for dcs.

As I am currently tackling the problem of making USB instruments : engine gauges I am looking at different ways to interface them to the sim, and I don't see anyone mentioning teensy boards. As far as I can understand, these little boards can handle up to 24 servo motors, or 4 steppers. Or be used as digital/analog I/O boards. At 24$ per board, I don't see why they're not in most of the cockpits. Am I missing something here? Beside the fact that there's no direct way of interfacing servo and stepper motors or LEDs just yet. Would that be so hard to program? Which brings me to my issue. Interfacing servos with opencockpit cards comes at 8$ per pointer/gauge, and 17$ for stepper motors. With the teensy board it would be 1$ per servo, and 6$ per stepper, a major reduction. And teensy can handle 4 times more steppers, which is perfect for making instrument panels. Is there a programmer that could shed some light on this for me?

Hi. I've been working on different ways to have usb instruments made, as cheap as possible. (amongst other things) Now I have reached a point where I can have a prototype made. These are all laser cut acrylic sheets, printed dials and face/back lit (I'll see which one works best). The interface is 2 opencockpits servo motor cards. I'm not building an A-10 simpit, so I'll make these available for purchase once squash out any prototype defects. Since the only available pack at the moment is more than 1,000$ and doesn't really look the part, my goal was to try to design one at half price or less. Everything in X and Y axis is made according to mil spec, to the best of my abilities. The rest, Z axis, is as close as possible since I'm working with sheets of material. According to calculations from my cad program, this should come to under 550$ assembled and shipped out, or 350$ for a kit, less if more people are interested. I've designed it so there's no need for any tools or glue. Just snap it together like puzzles or lego bricks. I'll probably have it cut next week. I'm also designing other instruments from the DCS lineup: ADI and HSI, the most complex of instruments, with all the flags and moving parts working. Made with a mix of laser cut acrylic and 3d printed parts. And a P-51 instrument panel If there's a programmer out there, that could get teensy boards to work with dcs and lua, this could become a 20$ per instrument venture, so cockpits for everyone :) (as it stands now, commercially available instruments range from 250$ - 500$)

http://www.checksix-forums.com/showthread.php?t=164654&page=13 pages 12 & 13, use google translate. Although the schematic is for cougar, they talk about the warthog too.

I would say it's printed on a 3D printer. So ABS or PLA plastic.

+1 And with the communication as it is, it's like they're trying to run the customers away.

When you get the red LEDs and the handle, pics pics pics :) You might also try to polish it. I think it's not more transparent because the surface is not glass smooth. You can try that on your first design.

Also, I don't see any WWII sim fans speaking against a modern jet, yet almost all of the modern jet fans are against a WWII plane being developed, even though they said a separate team developed the P-51 and it didn't take away any resources from the modern jet development. Have you modern jet fans even tried flying the p-51, or dogfighting in another WWII plane in COD maybe? When you see how much skills it takes just to keep it on optimal power settings, or flying it without breaking it, I don't think you'd be all that much against a WWII plane. I won't even mention the gunnery skills one needs to develop to hit a moving target, without a gyro sight even...

Changed the model according to Gadroc's drawing. I've also put in a cut away for an extra LED. Just in case if the printed model is too frosted, it might help disperse the light better. It should also be about 30% cheaper than the original, since it's basically a shell. This is how I think it would come out printed with a FDM printer (it's pretty frosty when finished). It can be printed on a Stereolithography machine, crystal clear, but it would cost about 120$ so that's a no go. However, I could model the negatives, out of which silicone molds could be made, and then the knobs cast in crystal clear resin. And we know just the guy to do it :D it would be much cheaper and better quality. provided there's enough interest.

Haha, just when I re-did it to Dropship's drawings :doh: Well, off to another re-do I guess..

Yeah, haven't really put much thought into dimensions, but taking another look, you're right, larger radius, sharper corners. I'll change the dimensions according to your drawings, looks quite close to the real thing. I use solidworks for my models and renders.

What about something like this: It has "fake" LED caps, also 3d printed, dimensions and details can be changed to whatever so it can be pretty close to the real thing. The handle is a 10x10 mm aluminum profile, it could even be bent in a metal hardware shop. but can also be changed. It can be glued together, or I can make it a snap-together depending on what resolution the 3d printer has. I don't have access to 3d printing services here. It would be really interesting to see something made this way.

Here it is, both attacker and the target at 15° and 30° yaw/pitch/bank:

So this is how it's setup now:

What ever dudes:D With DCS fidelity, I think we'll be happy with a WWII era bicycle.

I read that many of the WWII aces had a golden rule : When close (to shoot), get closer. So I figured 500 feet for close convergence, 1,000 medium and as you say 1,500 and 1,700 for far convergence. All mimicking the same harmonization pattern seen in the charts, no need to invent the wheel again. As for gunsight and muzzles coordinates, how do I go about these? Aren't those in the lua files? What I have now is just X and Y coordinates, taken from the charts.

OK, so with dispersion and harmonization charts that Yo-Yo provided, I was able to draw a 3D sketch of the bullet trajectories in one of my CAD programs. I am getting the same dispersion patterns so I guess it's correct. This is the harmonization pattern that I can observe from this: No.1 guns converge at 1,000 feet / at sight line No.2 guns converge at 1,100 feet / 11 inches below sight line No.3 guns converge at 1,200 feet / 18 inches above sight line - so that's a clear 10% increase in horizontal convergence, and 1:1,65 above/below sight line convergence ratio for No.3 and No.2 guns. So now I have the bullet trajectory, and azimuth and elevation for the machine guns. I could scale this harmonization pattern to lets say 50%, so "500" feet. Are guns azimuth and elevation all that is needed for someone to test it? I don't have P-51 installed, nor do I know which lua parameters are needed.

Building the external model wouldn't be a problem, provided that the drawings are available. Renting a wind tunnel, that I don't know:D But one might be able to get more than one group interested in the project. Just recently I've watched a National Geographic documentary, where Northrop built a full size Horton 229 replica, just to see how stealth it really was. Anyway, my head is already spinning so I'm gonna leave it at that...

I may be completely off base here, I'm no mathematician or aircraft engineer.. but if wind data is what devs need, would a scale model od the airplane help? I guess airplane drawings of these rare planes are more available than wind tunnel data, if it even exists. So one could build a CAD model of the airplane and have it 3d printed (resolution measured in microns) and use it to obtain wind tunnel data?

+1!

Seems to be a shadow, not a reflection. Shows on the rest of the cockpit too. Still pretty sweet!

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