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The Ultimate Homebrewed Cockpit
By Gene BuckleBoth the windscreen and the ejection seat rails will have to be removed before the cockpit can be moved into the shop. This is going to be a major chore since the windscreen is installed with more than fifty hi-torque slotted screws that require a special bit to remove them. I found out last night [05Sep00] that the particular bit that I need was struck from the USAF inventory 6 months ago as "obsolete" which means I have to custom grind a flat tip screwdriver to do the job.
TEWS Rack
This is a closeup shot of the TEWS racks behind the pilot. These racks held the black boxes that composed the F-15 Eagle's electronic warfare system. The green tube in the middle of the frame is the main air conditioning duct for the individual TEWS boxes. If you look up from that duct, you'll see five green bits of metal that have an octogon shape that's divided by a strip of metal. These are used to cover a duct hole in case a TEWS box is removed. It makes sure the system maintains the correct pressure while operating. This area has managed to accumulate quite a bit of crud so it's going to take quite a bit of cleaning to get it right.
Yeah, Baby!
Here's where all the magic happens. The people that did the mockup conversion of this fuselage were very careful with things as you can see. Each panel location on both side consoles were covered with the correctly-sized, dzus-mounted filler plates. This in itself is exceptional since it will save me the step of hand fabricating the backplates for the panels I don't have. I can use the existing filler plate!
The forward instrument panel is covered with two shaped cover plates. During my brief inspection of the cockpit during this photo shoot, I was pleased to find out that the wiring harnesses were still intact under both side consoles and behind the instrument panel. This means that when I do my panel wiring, I can continue to use the same cannon plug connectors without having to do extensive rewiring. You can see the vent I mentioned in the introduction sitting at the lower middle of the instrument panel.
Again, I've lucked out. You can see that not only are the rudder pedals still installed (you can see them as squares of metal with three holes in them inside the footwells on either side of the center pillar), but the flight stick gymbal is as well! Rob climbed in and pushed on the pedals. Surprisingly enough, not only did they operate properly, but the motion damper still has enough fluid in it to make it hard! The unfortunate thing is that the only way to actually reach that pedal mechansim involves being flat on your back or sitting upside down [Mork Style!] in the ejection seat.
