A10C Cockpit discussion

[Trounce]

Hello! I am so excited. Why? I suddenly for no reason whatsoever wanted to build a home cockpit one day. I have idle hands that like to build things. Funny, right? I got so many weird looks when I mentioned ambitions to build a pit to my friends. Chances are, if you are reading this you are either a moderator or experienced something similar when you endeavored to do a build.

It all started with a huge ambition: "I want to build a cockpit of an A10C." That quickly blossomed into a million questions! I also hastily purchased parts that I thought I would need (not a good idea). I saw a particular video that was very inspiring about building a flight simulator. The most important take-away from it was, go to forums. Check out videos of other pits. See documentation. Don't be afraid to look, ask and poke around.

My pit is far from being done. I only have one side console, a front dash without cut-outs for any of the instrumentation. So what am I blabbering on about? I just had an epiphany! Check this out:

What is the most expensive thing in a home sim? Most likely the electronics.

If you are building your own panels and displays, I assume a few of you are like me and purchase basic, commercial off-the-shelve (CoTS) gear. The CoTS gear I am talking about is maybe a simple LCD screen and figuring out how to get it to display for example, the CMSP status. Boy, that took me about 45 days to figure out the programming. I don't know anything about programming, by the way.

I also recommend that you do a proof of concept prior to purchasing very nice (and expensive) electronics. I am using $5 servos instead of $15-$20 servos/steppers and they are working very well for testing! As a matter of fact I have just got my first gauge working last night for the APU RPM. It was an arm raising moment for me, total triumph. I am probably going to keep using these cheap servos too, because they drive a pointer and that's it. Not much Torque needed there.

While you build, make a meticulous log about everything you do. That is what I am doing. A 9-year-old could build a CMSP with and LCD and gauges if they read my log. (Will post it once I have more meat and potatos in it). I also need to site much of it first and give mucho credit to all the folks that have helped directly and indirectly.

Don't be afraid or intimidated of a project like this, learn basic electronics, soldering, and have at least a good intuition of how to figure out and look up problems and answers. Thanks for reading. By the way, if anyone has some cool ideas to help me, I only understand basic "paint by number" instructions. If I can help anyone let me know. I'll try and respond as fast as I can. Thanks again! :D - Trounce -

[agrasyuk]

here is a cheap china servo lot , comes up to ~2$ per servo. better then 5$ .

for instruments though it is better to use the VID steppers as they produce much smoother motion. more expensive though and you will need to figure out how to interface them : lot of 10

 

good luck and post pictures of your project