2009 started with a new home, and at last, a permanent home for the sim. Moved house one weekend, then a week later left for Dubai for a month 🙁 Not so much pit building going on then.
Back at home, and the sim finally moved in. Man oh man, having the sim at home made a huge difference in motivation levels! More work has happened on the sim in the couple of months since!
So, a quick rundown on where we’re at…
– Some switches are wired up, mostly to the frankly brilliant BU0836 Board from Leo Bodnar.
– The projector is permanently mounted to the ceiling (don’t ask my wife about me drilling holes in the roof of her brand new house…).
– A hacked apart gamepad has become a stunning, and *cheap* interface for the Radar Control panel (a step by step tutorial to come)
– Eric Marciano’s F-16 HUD and Radar gauges have been intergrated into the panel, but may be replaced with some custom written gauges in the future.
– The first custom IO Board from “Russcool” is in and running. This little beaty (an early development board at this point) is driving a set of gear indicators “liberated” from my Queenair, and almost identical to the real Skyhawk items. The board is also driving encoders for Heading and Course for the HSI, as well as Baro adjustment on the Altimeter. These boards will be the subject of further posts as they develop. There is designs on the table at the moment for a board that will drive a 737 style MCP, radios, and even a customisable output board for driving LEDs, complete with an interface to talk to FSUIPC….. exciting stuff 🙂
This would also be an excellent time to say a huge HUGE thankyou to Pete Dowson. Now we all know that FSUIPC is useful. That’s kind of a given if you use MSFS for your sim. But I for one didn’t realise how much can be done in FSUIPC specifically for us pit builders. Today, armed with a simple interface, like a joystick board (did I mention Leo Bodnars’ magic little board?) you can make almost anything that you want work properly, we are now officially past the “hacked keyboard” stage for entry level sim builders!