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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."
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--
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.
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.
- One from OZ built into a Ford chassis
- An F/A 18 Hornet simulator made from wood, also in OZ
- A Boeing 767 in London that "flies" around the world
- A "multi-mission simulator" by an avionics engineer in the US
- An F-15 in Washington
You're welcome.Let's try not to Slashdot 'em too badly.
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
Iwas just over a year ago /. had another article just like this about a guy who built a 747 cockpit.
Check it out.
There are some 200 people (over a dozen using real aircraft fuselages) who are building home built simulators of aircraft and other things. I am helping to build a F-15C simulator, for more information see the July issue of "Smithsonian Air and Space". The task is really quite involved many of the people within the /. community would find that this is a very engaging hobby. One that involves every skill they ever learned and forces them to learn new skills as well. The very idea that these people are doing case mods that look like aircraft to run some of instruments would interest the /. community.
http://www.x-plane.com
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This program has FAA endorsement, unlike that other toy I used to use
This isn't any more of a full blown simulator than any of the other cockpit building projects. Flight sim enthusiasts have been building their own cockpits using EPIC cards for years- one person even used an old F-15 nose section that was rotting away at a museum and refurbished it completely.
e .earthlink.net/~bluumax/o m/
Building F-16 cockpits is pretty popular, interfaced with Falcon 4.0 which is easily the most realistic combat sim all around (yes, Flanker 2.5 and Il-2 probably have better flight models). Here are some current F-16 cockpit projects:
http://www.f16cockpit.net/
http://hom
http://virtualf16.20m.c
One convenient thing about building an F-16 cockpit is the Thrustmaster Cougar HOTAS joystick & throttle, which are exact replicas of the HOTAS system used in the F-16; all metal and accurate down to the lettering next to the buttons.
Again, this is not an uncommon thing in the flight sim world. Some go as far as purchasing flight suits and helmets to wear while flying in their virtual worlds.
You do have a point, and the same thing occurred to me just after reading about this. The thing is, technology is becoming easier to work with for everybody, for better and for worse.
I just recently heard about a guy (I believe here in Australia) who is building his very own long range cruise missile in his garage. Why he's doing it? To prove that if he can do it, so could people with an interest in doing some real damage.
I'm not sure what his point is beyond that; what he thinks the government should do given when it comes to the realisation that people can do some seriously dangerous shit in their own backyards. Personally, I'm inclined to say that terrorism has to be attacked from the other side of the spectrum, remove the frustration that leads to it.
Terrorism doesn't have reason. It can't be justified, understood or explained, but what we have to understand is the frustration and hopelessness of the oppressed palestinian people and the poverty and misery in wartorn countries like Afghanistan that leads them to the societal suicide that terrorism is.
I for one welcome our new SCOviet Russian overlords to whom all our base are belong.
In my six years at Boeing (and I'm told that, given the layoffs, I did well to last that long), I was fortunate enough to be able to 'fly' the full-motion 747 sim, as well as the fixed-base 737 NextGen.
Although the full-motion is definitely what I'd class as a "wild ride" in terms of convincing one's senses (ever try to land a 747 on only two engines?), I found that (much to my surprise) the fixed-base sims can produce many of the same sensations, simply by the projected movement on the window displays.
In other words: When I went into a climb in the fixed-base unit, it still felt like I was tilting up despite the fact that there were no motion components to move the cab around. Same thing when I went into a turn. I caught myself leaning into it, and feeling like it was really happening, just as I did during my private pilot training.
While fixed-base may not provide the full experience, it most definitely provides enough to effectively fool the senses if it's done right. And it sounds like this fellow did it right.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies