BravoYankee4

So, this is what it should be like then? Guess we need to do some stress and performance tests with an Mega and some mini/nano's so we have any good facts about three slave boards. If in reality it only works well with two slaves, it is quite a waste compared to use the Mega alone - when it comes to number of I/O's. Perhaps it is necessary for performance if you have a lot of things going on (like servos)? I have my MAX chips waiting, just need some time...

Most of the Swedish military design was about function before looks. All little things that might seem odd are usually there for a good reason. The hump on the back right in front of the tail fin wasn't there from the beginning. It was added later on to add performance (winds/turbulence etc). The same goes for the saw tooth at the wings, that wasn't either in the original design but added after some initial flight tests to improve performance/stability. Anyway, if you have experienced the Viggen live from a short distance so that you can hear and feel that brute force it is love at first sight! The J-29 Tunnan is another good example. Hey, we got a big round radial engine, lets build an airframe around it :) That bird is also something you consider either as beautiful or pure ugly.

Perhaps it was a deliberate decision to use them as a buffer to save the aircraft?

It cant be a coincidence... Strangely there is no comment about this in the book I found all the other information. There where several countries, Japan, Australia, India, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland and Austria, that almost bought the Viggen. Austria even had som pilots in Sweden doing pilot training. However most of the affairs was blocked by USA embargo and threats, so chosing other (american) aircrafts was not purely because of the Viggen being inferior. The most stupid USA argument was about that the RM8 (JT8-D) could not be exported as military equipment. There wasn't many countries during that time that didn't have the civil version in service, and the upgrades where made by SAAB anyway. But that wasn't the only strange decision from the Carter administration... ;)

Here are two pictures from the SF 37 belly landing (bird strike made it impossible to extend the landing gear). The external fuel tank and the countermeasure pods took the hit, and the aircraft was restored to fully operational again shortly.

Thanks. I know some people working at F7, perhaps they can share some details about this.

Some statistics. There where 9 prototypes and 329 service aircrafts built (originally approximately 800 was proposed) and it was a dangerous job being a Viggen pilot. Three of the prototypes crashed, and 48 of the ordinary where totalled and one burned up at the runway. In total 20 pilots died and 32 survived with parachutes. Two pilots walked away from a burning aircraft. In total less than 15% of the Viggens where lost, which is to be considered as pretty good figures. Especially considering the type of flying back then. And that the model was in service for almost 30 years. During the life time the accidents where reduced. Both because of material and quality enhancements but also due to pilot training. The JA 37 GWPS system probably saved a couple of lives... Ten aircrafts where lost in mid air collisions and eighteen ground collisions. There was sixteen engine failures (everything from surge, stall and metal fatigue) and ten other airframe failures (wings broken off etc). There is only one crash caused by a bird strike, and that plane managed to belly land and was later put back to service. I added a column in the document for service hours. As you can see many of the engine failures happend pretty soon. In general an aircraft stayed in service for 1600-2000 hours. Crashes.xls.pdf

Nice update you released ther Ian. Now I must find some extra time to test it...

Well, since LNS is a Swedish based team (mostly) I wouldn't be surprised if there would be a J-29 eventually to match the MIG-15 and F-86.

Yes, you are right. The Swafrap planes where painted grey and they where AJSF version from F21. In the film it is planes from F7. Really interesting and it needs some additional investigation.

Nice find Castor. Didn't know that we had that kind of exchange with the Polish airforce at that time. I need to get som help from my colleagues in Wroclaw to translate that part.

I scanned the English summary from the book (sorry for the quality, but I'm in a hurry). I also put together some of the design concepts from the develoment of the 37 platform. As you can see, a lot of influenses from other aircrafts, but with the particular demands and prereqs it evolved to what we know as Viggen.

The DCS gfx-engine needs to be updated so we can do this! As you can see, reverse thruster is a good thing to have in the northern part of this world :)

Just adding some fuel to the hype :pilotfly: Picture from the book Viggen by Sven Stridsberg. Photo Göran Billeson.

This is so nice. Then we must have a map with the island Öland and the light houses. Just read a story about one of them being used by Viggen pilots to do a fix update of the navigation system and it also had a radar reflector so it was easy to spot :thumbup:

Well, the problem was more like that I never found out what settings to have in the Arduino application - I always got some communication errors... I might revisit that some day.

Vielen dank Ian. Your input is always welcome. I got some of the micros without the usb-port, but never got the programming (with the USB-serial adapter) to work. So after some faul language they are back on the shelf doing nothing. So from my perspective it is money well spent having some extra cost for boards that can easily be hooked up directly with an USB cable for (re-)programming. Anyway, the arduinos is one of the smaller posts in the cockpit budget anyway :music_whistling: Speaking of kabelsalat this picture of the old telephone distribution tower in Stockholm comes to mind :)

The PCB's will be general and the plan is to share the gerber files so anyone can order their own. With the current low cost PCB makers in China it is plain stupid to mess around with prototype boards any more. I will idle a little more and see in what direction the next version of DCS-Bios goes. It looks like Ian will go for a RS-485 bus and Arduino nanos, but I need that fully confirmed before setting my design. The second option is to go for a couple of Arduino Megas. The obvious advantage with a bus and nano's is that you can have distribution points behind every sub panel, reducing the wires significantly. Another way of doing it is to use standard RJ-45 cables and build breakout boards. Then you can have 7 in- or outputs (plus ground) per cable.

The landing gear and flaps indicators are backlit, and the big round indicator is for the master caution.

Well, it isn't pretty and that was not the intention either. This serves as a temporary mockup and a proof of concept. The purpose is mainly to get me some lessons learned before I do a final build. And yes, I have already made some conclusions... First, there will be a lot of wiring and I need to figure out the best way of routing this. And I have to build some breakout adapters (shields) for the Arduino(s). Probably I will do something with ribbon cables (similar to IDE hard drive) with quick connectors. My plan is also to do some pcb's with ULN2803 drivers so I can add light bulbs and LED's with greater power. Perhaps a combined driver/break out board. The original plan was to build a MIG-21 cockpit, but now having the AJS-37 Viggen more or less confirmed that will be my future priority. Still, I wan't to enjoy the MIG-21 during this linger so I will continue with this "bastard panel" with some commonly used switches and indicators. Eventually I will build build a second for the right side indicators and controls.

Speaking of sheeps clothing. In general the AJ's where painted with the splinter camo and the JA's where painted grey. However some JA's had the splinter camo as well, in order to make it harder for the other side to know exactly what was up in the air for the moment...

Go find an old M.A.C.H 3 arcade cabinet and play that one - everything you need. It has both a fighterbomber and interceptor modes :joystick: If you can't find the old laser disc system, it is playable in M.A.M.E.

Well, a Viggen module without at Swedish map bundled would be like a beach party without the babes ;) I rather pay extra for a map of high quality rather than having free maps just because there has to be a map...

Yeah... the Swedish military was pretty good in re-labeling pretty much anything. But the instruments where probably kept "as-is". My point was not to insinuate any errors - just a comment of surprise.

Well, as suggested above, perhaps a good compromise would be to have a kind of synchronization button, that forces an update of the current state when pressed? I'm good with considering this in 2.0. Personally I think that the RS-485 functionality and perhaps stepper motors are of higher priority.