Build Your Own Boeing 737 Simulator
crux6rind writes "This guy built his own Boeing 737-700 simulator in his garage. The simulator uses elements of a retired Continental B-737-100 along with other genuine Boeing 737 avionics and system components. The simulator will be of the fixed-base variety (no motion, just outside visuals), using Microsoft Flight Simulator 2000, interfaced with R&R Electronics' EPIC system. This system allows you to interface switches, lights, buzzers, gauges, digital readouts with virtually any PC flight simulator out there."
So who'd rather fly a boat than a sexy Stealth?
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
He paid 25,000 - 30,000 USD for the stuff currently. I figure thats about how much this slashdotting will cost him in bandwidth.
Ready....Aim....SLASHDOT
but this is uber cool anyway. I had a difficult time understanding the timeline of the pictures, but still, very cool. As an avid Sim Pilot and a student pilot, this is the holy grail of sim-ers.
--sig fault--
boy that /. effect is no sim...
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Build Your Own Boeing 737 Simulator - if you happen to have a spare 737 lying around to build it from!
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
If he paid $25,000 to build this you would think he could pay $50 to get a new version of MS Flight Sim.
Does the simulator keep track of how fast the virtual airline is burning up cash, and how long before they go bankrupt?
And, of course, no airplane cockpit is complete, these days, without a Breathalyzer.
"There's no air in space."
Homer: "Then why's there an Air In Space Museum?"
As long as they don't touch my car...
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
I plan on pumping some fat unix administrator full of helium and tethering him above my computer.
Smithers: But sir....
Burns (pointing a gun at Smithers): I said, hop in....
Well, Fine! I'll go build my own simulator.
With Black-jack...and hookers.
In fact, forget the Black-jack!
Awe, screw the whole thing.
...is that his wife/girlfriend/mom lets him keep it.
A friend and I had an opportunity to do the same thing with an A-7 Corsair cockpit, but his wife nixed the idea of having a 7'x4'x12' perennial project in "her" garage.
"You done taken a wrong turn."
-Bill McKinney, in Deliverance
I was watching the Discovery channel, and saw a show about pilot training or something, and it compared the American training sims (with real cockpit controls, digital displays surrounding the pilot, etc) and Soviet ones (where the viewable area around the pilot was broken down into 6 or so sections where the picture on each section was actually printed on a roll, and the rolls would all scroll back and forth with the pilots movements to try and provide a realistic setting for the aircrafts movements).
The show mention that as the Russian technology/funding improved, and they were able to build better simulators, they auctioned off their old ones, many of which went to nations with hand-me-down militaries, like Afghanistan.
Does anyone know what I'm talking about? I'd really like to look into buying one just as a keepsake, although they probably belong in museums =)