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The Ultimate Homebrewed Cockpit - Part 2
by Gene Buckle

Now in a homebuilt cockpit, you only need to go this route if you're going for maximum realism and you've got the cash to spare. Digital to Synchro converters will typically cost $900 each, and you need one for each synchro you need to drive. For example, you'd need two of them to drive the ball in an artifical horizon. This really is only an option for those that MUST have the cream of the crop in their cockpits.

For most cockpit builders, it's perfectly ok to utilize stepper motors or air core meter movements for the needle based indicators, so don't worry about it if you can't afford the really expensive stuff. I'm not even going to worry about the Digital to Synchro converters until the very end of the project, by which time I expect to have saved enough money to buy the silly things. :)

The most important thing you can have in your hands when you start a project like this is documentation about the systems you're going to simulate. For a military aircraft, this would mean obtaining a manual called a "Dash One". This book is the aircraft equivalent to the owners manual you get with a new car. By using the operation data in the Dash One, you'll be able to accurately simulate the operation of everything you need or want to. This is also where another very important concept comes in to play. Theater. What you're doing is as much theater (smoke & mirrors) as it is reality. This is really the whole key in flight simulation. You don't really need to know HOW a system works as much as you need to know how to OPERATE it. Once you know how the operation goes, you can emulate that well enough to fool even the most seasoned pilot.

For my cockpit project, there will be multiple computers handling the various jobs to complete the simulation. Three computers will be devoted to visuals. The computer displaying the forward view will be the primary machine - it will run the "master" copy of the flight simulation software and handle all internal and external events. The other two computers will be "video slaves" that obtain data from the primary machine so that they correctly reflect the outside environment as the primary computer sees it.

There will be one or more hardware interface computers that will have EPIC boards installed and will be running the various avionics packages. Lastly, there will be one or more computers providing ambience sounds like the landing gear cycling, jet turbine sounds, or a cockpit voice announcer.

The software running on the hardware interface computers will directly interface each panel or instrument via the EPIC board (or small embedded computers on an as-required basis) and the primary display computer. There will be a small program running for each panel and instrument in the cockpit. This will allow me to avoid running a difficult to maintain monolithic application that handles all services and will allow easy modification or updating as needed. The host environment will be either Linux or QNX. I'll decide once I'm at the stage when I need to evaluate the performance requirements of the hardware interfacing systems.

When this project is completed, I will have constructed the best flight simulation environment that a homebuilder can achieve. If I've done my job, anyone that flies my cockpit for any length of time should come out sweating like a pig and shaking like a heroin addict that hasn't seen a fix in three weeks.

Understand however, that I'm not the first to accomplish this. Just take a look at the incredible feats performed by some of the individuals listed on the Cockpit Projects link page on the EPIC website. I know I won't be the last.

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