AJ.eightFive

How are things going jrsteensen? Any sexy new renders you can tease us with?

Looking at picking up some acrylic sheet so I can start experimenting with back-lit panel fabrication. I'd rather just order one big sheet cut down into a more manageable size so I have enough to experiment with and plenty remaining to pack the actual panels when the plans are available. If I recall correctly, you are designing the OpenHornet back-lit panels around the assumption they will be made of stacked layers of 3mm/0.125" acrylic, milled (necessitating cast, not extruded acrylic), painted and engraved, is that correct? I'm thinking to get the sheet cut down into 5.750" wide blanks to minimize material wastage when milling the light plate and panel to their final dimensions while being wide enough to make the backing plate to the mil-spec dimension if I stick with an acrylic back plate instead of aluminum. Are the OpenHornet panels being designed around those same dimensions from the mil-spec or should I look at getting the sheets cut to a different size? Thanks and Happy New Year!

Amazing work as always! Just got my Shapeoko XXL fired up before Christmas and can't wait to start making some OpenHornet related chips and sawdust!

Been a while since I've stopped by. That latest render looks amazing, keep up the good work!

Great update, thank you!

Thanks for the reply! No worries re: releasing info prematurely. Glad you guys are dedicated to producing something of high quality. I can keep fooling around with what I have for now. There's still plenty to learn and my Shakepoko 3 arrives tomorrow so I need to make a home for it which will keep me busy for a while! Congrats on getting the website up, it's looking great, as are the latest renders! I'll keep an eye on the forums for when they are open to sign-ups. For now, I've made use of the most important part of the site and dropped of a little care package to get you started toward your $250 goal. Feel free to PM me your logo requirements too. I made Zorlac's "Touch Buddy" logo many, many years ago, maybe I can help with this one too. :) :pilotfly:

I picked up a couple of knock-off Arduino starter kits off Amazon a little while ago and have been playing around with the various components along with DCS-BIOS. While playing around with the included stepper motor last night, I noticed the motion is not very fast, certainly not fast enough to keep up with an IVSI or Altimeter winding through several thousand feet per second. Are there stepper motors that are capable of much faster motion (mine seems limited to about 40rpm, not sure if it's a limitation of the motor itself, the Uno R3 or the ULN2003 driver board but I'm guessing it's the motor) or do you plan to use something else for those instruments? I have been reading about air core motors as well but can't seem to find any for purchase. On that note, you mentioned in another post that you have many of the components for the project identified. I assume by this you mean things like switches, motors, LEDs etc. If that's the case, would you mind sharing your source for these? I'd like to order some stuff to tinker with so I can see how it all works and hopefully shallow the learning curve when you guys start releasing plans. Thanks!

Great! I think anyone that is serious enough about building a pit from your plans will have already gone down the road of setting up voice control and that's one less panel for you to design :). I haven't been home since 2.5 released but once I've got it up and running I'll take a look at what ED have done with the radio system lately and see if I can't get my mod up to date too. I wanted to ask if any of your spindle gauge designs are far enough along that you could release it for people to use as a primer of sorts while the rest is in development? My thinking is that a component like the standby airspeed indicator or VSI would make a good entry point for a novice like myself as building one would involve most of the skills/processes that will be required for the rest of the project, without being overly complicated. I see it as a sort of "minimum viable product" if you will. What do you think?

I feel like AI radio commands are best handled using voice recognition software. It's hard to believe it's been 6 or more years since I've flown in DCS, but when I did, I had been working on modifying the radio system to make it easier to use with AI voice control programs like VAC and had it in a pretty good state where I could delegate tasks to my AI wingman and communicate with ATC in the A-10 quite easily. https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=82529. I can't imagine it still works after all this time though but I'll definitely be taking another look when the Hornet releases. I'm sure others have run with the idea and made improvements since though. Anyway, if you are going to make a panel for it, the simplest solution would just be two rows of 7 pushbuttons (maybe of the UFC keypad style?). Row 1 with ESC and F1-F6 and row 2 with Backspace and F7-12. Some brail, maybe on the F1 (1 dot) and F7 (2 dots), and a "guard" (like around the probe extend switch) separating the ESC and Backspace buttons from the others would help with tactile identification so you can stay head up. Would look like this: [ESC] | [F1] [F2] [F3] [F4] [F5] [F6] [bCK] | [F7] [F8] [F9] [10] [11] [12]

I just dug one out of my basement. I bought it a few years back, realized pretty quickly I preferred the Warthog throttle, and put it back in the box. It's still in perfect condition. I'm in Toronto, Canada. Shoot me a PM with an offer if anyone is interested and still watching this thread. Edit: Sold

Wish I had the time to work on this some more :( Haven't even been able to fire up the sim for months. Hope someone else is able to pick the ball up and run with it for you guys!

shamandgg, the latest release of the mod is only compatible with DCS A-10C 1.1.1.1. I'm working on a DCS:W 1.2.0 compatible version as we speak. It's nearly ready but I want to do a little more testing this time around.

Thanks Formski, Have just tested the first two missions of the Devil's Cross campaign and so far it's looking good. All of the allied flight reports played correctly and I didn't see any instances where a subtitle appeared but no voice message was played. Will probably be another week or so before the mod is ready and I might just wait for FC3 and accompanying patch for DCS:W before I put out a new version of the mod.

Formski, as I'm updating the mod for DCS:W I'm also trying address any of the existing bugs. I haven't been able to reproduce yours however. If you're able to send me a mission where this clearly happens that might help. I've created a couple of missions myself and the AI units are making the radio calls correctly, along with subtitles. Thanks!

Did you consider looking for an update on the TARS website? It's there...