2020 a retrospective. 2020 was a strange year, a statement nobody will challenge. The COVID-19 pandemic, lockdowns, restrictions, and pay-cuts meant a lot of impact on my hobbies, both in terms of time, funds, and enthusiasm.I did manage to knock a good number of items ticked off my ‘to-do’ list, with some interesting and unexpected […]
ARC-159 Update
The ARC-159 UHF Radio was one of the very first panels I built for my first Skyhawk sim, back in the early 2000’s. Back then I didn’t have access to CAD/CAM CNC or even plastics, so it was all made with whatever materials I had at hand. The design was all done in Corel Draw […]
Workshop update
For some time I have been planning a major re-shuffle of the garage space, partly to make room for the 737 simulator, and partly to give me a more usable workbench. The current bench was built to fit into a space in the previous garage, and is really much too small for most of the […]
Time to Dust off ’58
6258, the Skyhawk Sim has been pretty neglected for a while, for a whole raft of reasons. Last night, in the middle of a sleepless night, I had a great idea to fast-track getting her flying again quite quickly. So tonight, for Sim Work Night I set about getting her back and flyable. First up […]
Arrow Flight Model Update
One of my pet ‘peeves’ with the Arrow’s Flight Model was the way the elevator trim functioned. Full nose-up trim gave about 80-85KIAS, much too fast for approach. It has been something I have wanted to try and fix for some time. Tonight I had an epiphany as to how to tackle the problem, and […]
More Arrow Flying
As I said in the last post; it is very nice to go out to the ManCave and just go flying. Tonight was a night for just that. I flew out to the training area from Wigram and just enjoyed flying around. The sim worked perfectly, the aircraft flew as expected, and even the weather […]
The Arrow is home
It was a nice feeling, last night, to be go out to the ManCave, flick the switch and go flying in the Arrow, with no worries about whether or not the PC would start. Though it was only a very short flight it was very satisfying! The flight was a quick ‘reposition’ from Christchurch Intl […]
SWN 11/08/2020 – Arrow Surgery
For a while the Arrow’s Sim PC has been giving trouble, mostly when trying to start it. Last week I was flying the sim home to Wigram from Whenuapai when it crashed a couple of times en-route. That was the motivation I needed to finally fix the problem!Tonight’s mission, therefore was to get the PC […]
SWN: July 13th
In my normal fashion I have again reversed a decision in my projects. Some time ago I was working on a Tactical Ops program, trying to make MSFS into a pseudo-military sim, which was quite clunky, and requires a PC running a bunch of apps to air it all happen. I called ‘time’ on the […]
Sim Work Night: AI Edition
Another evening of work on Monowai. My plan was to finish off a few modelling items, then start building scenery in various locations.I am pretty comfortable that I have the model finished to a standard that I could release, so next up comes the ‘factory work’; Creating each variation of the basic model, then setting […]