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True Confessions of a Combat Sim Cockpit Builder
by Bob "Groucho" Marks |
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Dave "Bhodi49" Wheeler is one such builder and all around great guy who I ran into in the COMBATSIM.COM™ "HOTAS and Homebrew Cockpits" forum area, and has been irreplaceable at getting me deeper into debt- uh, I mean, inspiring me with new ideas. Steve "Wildkat" Wilson is another one of the usual suspects. Shawn "Von" Keller is a fellow sim buff, friend, co-worker, and (most importantly for my project) an electrical engineer who understands my mania gives me great reality checks when he's not building his (real) airplane. Derek Higgs of the aforementioned Cockpit Links runs a mailing list for 'pit builders- a group of people who are great for flinging half-assed concepts at and seeing what sticks. All of these folks are assets and are also handy scapegoats when my wife sees the monthly credit card statement.
 Concept drawn in Photoshop. Pick your Passion All these ideas- all these possible divergent paths- which way to go? A cockpit varies from two pieces of wood nailed to chair arms to full-scale mockups of existent aircraft cockpits full-motion boxes that Boeing would respect, so what do you build? Like spec'ing out your own computer- that depends on your personal tastes, personality, and how much coin you want to blow. But unlike a hotrod PC- you can always do real work on that- a combat sim cockpit is only good for clearing the skies of outlaws and worrying your significant other. So choose carefully: How much room do you have? Can you get it in/out/around your abode (either physically or figuratively- past your wife/mother/girlfriend)? Do you have the skills or can you bribe/encourage/blackmail someone who does have the expertise needed to build your hallucination? How much detail do you want, keeping in mind that increased detail is directly proportional to increased cash flow? These factors figured into the decision I made on the configuration for my cockpit. Dubbed "MachPit" (ooh ahh, double meaning), it was conceived to fit the following parameters: 1) Large enough to put all my HOTAS gear into yet maintaining a small enough footprint to fit through the doors of my house and into my office. 2) Be able to fit my F-86E ejection seat, which needed to go somewhere by spousal decree. 3) Use self-contained off-the-shelf programmable components to keep spark chasing down to a minimum (electronics are not my strong suit). 4) Construction of carbon fiber / fiberglass / epoxy composite materials, which is something I do know. This turned out to be weird- as far as I can tell; the MachPit is the only composite sim out there. 5) Have a killer sound system. 6) Be "generic" and flexible enough to fulfill the function of whatever aircraft I'm simulating, be it a '40s warbird from EAW, Apache-Havoc attack chopper, or pointy-nosed jet fighter. 7) Have enough "sex-appeal" so my wife will let me put it in the house.
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 Almost Finished! 8/13/99- I feel like I've reached a real milestone...it looks like a damn cockpit! Here's the main office decked out fairly complete for a "reach test", with the nose removed for easier access.. Feels great! The keypad up front is the Kinesis Savant programmable keypad. Feels like a good quality piece of gear- I'll get to programming it this weekend (simple- I just have pick which functions I need). Best part is- Look ma, no keyboard! Barely visible behind the stick is the mach meter and altimeter. And get a load of that ADI- sucker is huge! Gear handle, stores jettison, flap switch and master arm switches will go beneath the left MasterPilot "MFD". As getting all this gear to work together is a job all it's own, I've started a new page- "Systems Integration". In an attempt to pay back the cockpit building community and infect those who are not yet in said group of lunatics, I've documented the construction from the beginning on The MachPit Homepage (http://machpit.homepage.com). It's all there, so I won't go into detail here. Suffice to say, I'm not quite sure what's in control- me, or my mania. It gets updated constantly, or at least when I get enough kitchen passes to go work on it. Encouragement and An Apology In Advance Want full, sweaty palm immersion? Build a cockpit. Want to be initially mocked and then offered grudging respect by your friends and co-workers (especially the ones who want to try it)? Build a cockpit. Short of time and money to spare with a surplus of common sense? Keep the stick velcroed to the desk, because this form of madness will suck out your spare time and cash like God's own Dustbuster. We combat cockpit builders simply take hardcore simming (all cockpit builders are hardcore- I can't thin of one that was built around any Novalogic sim, for example) one logical step further. When you boil it all down, what's a cockpit but a place to put all your HOTAS gear into? Going this route is neither for the chronologically- challenged nor for the sane. Should you decide to build your own sim cockpit, keep in mind that normal people do not do this. If you can accept that, welcome. And sorry about the funny looks you'll get when your buddies ask you what you are working on. My advice- look them straight in the eye, and tell them you've lost it. And practice your nervous laugh. It helps. Manics and those with cockpit builder's disease can check out Groucho's home page at  Join a discussion forum on this article by clicking HERE.
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