For MXSMANIC: Flight Simulator Gear?

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 in message
oups.com...
It sounds like your movie nights are fun, especially the sim sessions.
Who chooses to fly the sim?

Usually everyone takes a turn at it, especially if the crowd is small.
We attract anywhere from 3 to 30 people on any given movie night, so we
never really know what to expect.

The older guys always choose to fly the Vickers, or the Spirit of St
Louis. The young guys always choose the 182, or the Caravan on floats.
It's really fun, and I'm thinking of adding a combat sim just for
variety.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"


You need to turn it into a competition. Maybe spot landings a OSH one week
and ILS with zero/zero at LAX. the next.

Jay Honeck wrote:
....
Louis. 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, ... ?

"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

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

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 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"

"Gig 601XL Builder" wrDOTgiaconaATcox.net wrote in message
...

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
oups.com...
It sounds like your movie nights are fun, especially the sim sessions.
Who chooses to fly the sim?

Usually everyone takes a turn at it, especially if the crowd is small.
We attract anywhere from 3 to 30 people on any given movie night, so we
never really know what to expect.

The older guys always choose to fly the Vickers, or the Spirit of St
Louis. The young guys always choose the 182, or the Caravan on floats.
It's really fun, and I'm thinking of adding a combat sim just for
variety.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"


You need to turn it into a competition. Maybe spot landings a OSH one week
and ILS with zero/zero at LAX. the next.

If you want a competition: http://www.condorsoaring.com/index.htm
http://www.condorsoaring.com/serverlist.php

They have races going on all the time. Of course, this would mean leaving
the noise maker that spins the crutch on the front behind...

How do you think you could do against glider pilots?

--
Geoff
The Sea Hawk at Wow Way d0t Com
remove spaces and make the obvious substitutions to reply by mail
When immigration is outlawed, only outlaws will immigrate.