For MXSMANIC: Flight Simulator Gear?

The young guys always choose the 182, or the Caravan on floats.
...
Float plane in a sim? Does it know about things such as getting "on
the step", high speed taxi turns, sailing into a mooring or dock using
the rudder, going up on one float to cut down drag, ... ?

It does get up on the step, and the rudders do work in the water. The
sounds and visuals are quite convincing, too.

Of course, I've never actually flown a float plane, so you may find it
hopelessly unrealistic.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Jay,

You have to checkout this video it is a flight sim video showing what
you can do if you upgrade your sim.
His sim has all the latest gadgets and upgrades that will give you the most
realistic look and feel.
He also has some suggestions on the YouTube.com site that will
help make your sim out of this world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z89Hk...e=user&search=

Here is partial list of add-ons he uses:
-Ground Environment Pro
-Ultimate Terrain Europe
-Active Sky 6
-Mega Airport Frankfurt
-PMDG 737-800

David - KGYH


"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
ups.com...
As long as we now have a certified MS Flight Simulator expert in-group,
with MXSMANIC, I may as well ask some sim advice...

Every Tuesday night we have "Movie Night" at the inn, where we show
free aviation movies in our theater. The theater has a 104" screen,
with a high-def projector hooked up to DVD/VHS -- and a PC.

Before (and, sometimes, after) the movie, we hold flight simulator
sessions, using both MS Flight Sim and X-Plane. This is a lot of fun
(that big screen is WAY cool for sim flying!), but the joystick
generates a significant number of "complaints" about how unrealistic
the controls are. And I agree.

Bottom line: Flying a Skylane with a joystick is just....wrong.

Sooooo...I've purchased the CH brand of yoke/throttles and rudder
pedals, all of which should be delivered early this week. These will
go a long ways toward making the flight experience a LOT more
realistic, but getting the controls into the correct ergonomic position
for users will be difficult in the theater, soooo:

See: http://www.avshop.com/prodinfo.asp?number=6531

I tested this unique rig at Oshkosh this year, and found it to be
PERFECT for the task, and I'm thinking about either purchasing one or
having my A&P weld up something similar. Before I go to this extreme,
however, (well, what *I* think is extreme) how do YOU "fly" your sim
set up? What, in your opinion, is the best cockpit set up for
"piloting" a sim?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Jay Honeck wrote:
Sooooo...I've purchased the CH brand of yoke/throttles and rudder
pedals, all of which should be delivered early this week.

You might set these up in the "standard" way (clamp the yoke to the edge
of a table, put the pedals on the floor) and see what the response is.
I suspect that it will be enough of an improvement over the joystick
that you won't _have_ to spring for the fancy jig for a while. On the
other hand, you may be optimizing for maximum shiny toys instead of for
minimum cost.

I tested this unique rig at Oshkosh this year, and found it to be
PERFECT for the task, and I'm thinking about either purchasing one or
having my A&P weld up something similar.

I really think living in Oklahoma is starting to rub off on me: my first
thought was that a junk four-door car body and a Sawzall might do the
job. (An old pickup cab is almost perfect, except that they usually
have bench seats which isn't quite what you want.) Remove the doors,
hood, and front fenders, and cut the front of the car off just forward
of the firewall. Cut the A-pillars at the base of the windshield and
the B-pillars just below the roof so you can fold the roof back, then
cut the B-pillars again just above the floor and get rid of them. Cut
the floor just aft of the front seat attachment points. You then have
an assembly consisting of the dash and (adjustable) front seats. Get
rid of the steering column if it wasn't gone already; there is usually
a good hardpoint a few inches forward of the steering wheel where the
column mounted to the dash - this is where you bolt down the yoke. Get
rid of the car pedals and bolt the sim pedals to the floor where they
were. If you don't like the "I'm sitting in a car" sight picture, get
a piece of 1/4" plywood and cut it into roughly a "D" shape (like the
panel of a 172/182), paint it black, and mount it just forward of the
yoke. Grind down sharp edges, paint, and add carpeting/trim to taste.

Getting a junk airplane fuselage would of course look even better, but
those are usually harder to come by, and probably more expensive, than
junk cars. You might talk to the local fire department; they might be
able to do some of the cutting for you under the disguise of rescue
training. If the city department isn't interested, try the local
volunteer departments - many of them don't get to do training like that
as often and they may be more willing to help.

You do realize this is just the beginning, right? If you have a custom
chair/mount for the yoke and pedals, the next question we'll see from
you will be along the lines of "How do you mount some real instruments
in the 'panel' and drive them from the computer?" After that it will
probably be something like "So I was down at Tractor Supply today and I
saw some hydraulic cylinders and I started thinking..." On the other
hand, if you do end up building a full sim, you can charge way more for
it than you charge for a room. As a bonus, there's no social stigma
associated with renting sim time by the hour.

Matt Roberds

I really think living in Oklahoma is starting to rub off on me: my first
thought was that a junk four-door car body and a Sawzall might do the
job. (An old pickup cab is almost perfect, except that they usually
have bench seats which isn't quite what you want.)

Snip of great ideas

At first I was all excited about your ideas, Matt.

Unfortunately, reality intervened. Our theater must pull double-duty
as a meeting room. I'm not sure how I would explain away having the
cab of an old pickup truck in there, while some guy in a tie is giving
his Powerpoint presentation around it...

;-)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Jay Honeck wrote:
I really think living in Oklahoma is starting to rub off on me: my first
thought was that a junk four-door car body and a Sawzall might do the
job. (An old pickup cab is almost perfect, except that they usually
have bench seats which isn't quite what you want.)

At first I was all excited about your ideas, Matt.

Unfortunately, reality intervened. Our theater must pull double-duty
as a meeting room. I'm not sure how I would explain away having the
cab of an old pickup truck in there, while some guy in a tie is giving
his Powerpoint presentation around it...

I can't find it right now, but there was a website dedicated to just
this kind of setup. Some guys had taken an trashed Ford Galaxy 500 or
something similar, and mounted it on hydraulics in their garage. The
dash was torn out and replaced with a dual flight yoke setup and
instruments. An overhead projector showed the outside view on the
garage wall. Pretty hilarious when you first saw it, then pretty
interesting.

Kev

Jay Honeck wrote:
Unfortunately, reality intervened. Our theater must pull double-duty
as a meeting room.

It probably wouldn't be too hard to put casters or maybe some nylon skids
on the bottom of the car body, so you could at least shove it into a
corner when you're not using it. By careful selection of paint and trim,
it can be made to look as little like a car body as you want.

I'm not sure how I would explain away having the cab of an old pickup
truck in there,

"Welcome to Iowa"?

while some guy in a tie is giving his Powerpoint presentation around
it...

Powerpoint kills people anyway, so IMHO it's not a big loss if somebody
can't use it. On the other hand it likely _does_ help rent hotel rooms,
so you probably have a different opinion.

I think what all this is pointing to is that you need a simulator room.
You may want to go ahead and build it with a high ceiling (20 feet or
more) to prepare for the eventual full-motion sim.

Matt Roberds

On Mon, 23 Oct 2006 16:21:17 GMT, wrote:

Jay Honeck wrote:
Unfortunately, reality intervened. Our theater must pull double-duty
as a meeting room.

It probably wouldn't be too hard to put casters or maybe some nylon skids
on the bottom of the car body, so you could at least shove it into a
corner when you're not using it. By careful selection of paint and trim,
it can be made to look as little like a car body as you want.

There's a guy at a nearby airport (Vashon Muni) that has a DC-3 cockpit on
rollers. The cabin was cut out just under the cockpit floor to the limits of
the front windshield and side windows. Nothing (else) has been done with it
yet, but I was surprised at how compact the package was.

When I went to Space Camp a few years back, we got to fly PC-based simulators
from dummy fighter cockpits with the monitor image displayed in front using a
digital projector. Was surprisingly effective...you had enough image in your
peripheral vision. Similar trick would be cool with the DC-3 cockpit, too...

Ron Wanttaja

There's a guy at a nearby airport (Vashon Muni) that has a DC-3 cockpit on
rollers. The cabin was cut out just under the cockpit floor to the limits of
the front windshield and side windows. Nothing (else) has been done with it
yet, but I was surprised at how compact the package was.

When I went to Space Camp a few years back, we got to fly PC-based simulators
from dummy fighter cockpits with the monitor image displayed in front using a
digital projector. Was surprisingly effective...you had enough image in your
peripheral vision. Similar trick would be cool with the DC-3 cockpit, too...

Yeah, that 104-inch screen would work perfectly for this.
Unfortunately, my meeting room would be effectively eliminated -- which
wouldn't break my heart, but it DOES get used fairly regularly.

I wonder where you get a DC-3 cockpit nowadays?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
ups.com...
however, (well, what *I* think is extreme) how do YOU "fly" your sim
set up? What, in your opinion, is the best cockpit set up for
"piloting" a sim?

I used to fly MS sim years ago before I started pilot lessons. The last time
I flew a sim was during ground school in OKC, (the whole class) got a chance
to fly the FAA's 727(?) full-motion sim, now THAT was a sim! -- haven't
flown a sim since...

It'll depend on how much you want to invest... ;-)

-Greg B.

"Greg B" wrote in message
...
"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
ups.com...
however, (well, what *I* think is extreme) how do YOU "fly" your sim
set up? What, in your opinion, is the best cockpit set up for
"piloting" a sim?

I used to fly MS sim years ago before I started pilot lessons. The last
time
I flew a sim was during ground school in OKC, (the whole class) got a
chance
to fly the FAA's 727(?) full-motion sim, now THAT was a sim! -- haven't
flown a sim since...

It'll depend on how much you want to invest... ;-)

-Greg B.


I started to price doing something like that back around 1980. At that
time, the Cessna 402s commonly flying between Florida and the Bahamas were
experiencing a wave of ditchings--or so it seemed. All of the Cessna twins
that I know of have a single engine ceiling well above sea level, even in
summer, which which makes/made them nearly unique in the light twin market.
Therefore I, and a couple of friends, believed that simulator training might
be a viable market--since it could provide more complete and intense
training in emergency procedures and could bring the pilot proficiency level
up to that expected by the larger carriers. We believed that all of that
could be accomplished for about half the price of a real airplane.

We were just plain wrong!

The projected numbers quickly added up--to more than a million. Remember
that those were 1980 dollars! At that point, for a lot of reasons including
very optomistic assumptions about the engineering we could contribute, we
were probably still low by much more than half.

If you double the preliminary estimate that we reached, which is still
optomistic, and then add 25 years of inflation at the "true" rate of about
5.5%, a current cost estimate probably starts around 8 million to build just
one. (Yes, I know, production volume might improve that.)

Interestingly, the only thing that would have cost less that expected would
have been to have Cessna instrument an airplane and fly off the data points.

Peter