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A320 Project - Busy building
Several things have been happening, but none of them really exciting.
1. We have build the platform to stand the simulator on. We used pallets. Of course, one pallet wasn't wide enough and two was too wide so we ended up cutting and the base is 1 1/2 pallets wide by 2 pallets long. The pallets are rectangular so the base is 2.4m by 1.8m. We braced them all together and screwed everything tight. Then we discussed whether or not it should be be mobile. We ummed and ahhed and decided it should. It would've taken too many wheels to be stable so we hit upon the idea of office chair bases. Luckily, there is a bulk rubbish collection nearby so we found 6 office chairs, stripped the bases and fastened those to the pallets. I forgot to take a picture before we turned it over ... but it looked like this sketch
Turned over ... it looks like this
We are going to skin it with 6mm MDF and I have a nice piece of dark blue carpet to put over it.
2. We (are almost) finished the frames. The Cap and FO frames are built with their front panels on. The Centre frame is built but there are problems with the front panel.
In the aircraft, The centre frame houses 2 LCDs in the centre for the engine management displays, the lading gear hardware and lights on the right and standby instruments on the left. The standby instruments are analogue duplicates of the main flying instruments in case the glass ones fail. The centre frame has a 19" CRT on it's side to house the LCDs (one above the other). There isn't enough space to have the standby instruments so we will probably just print dummies as they are redundant anyway. Once the glareshield goes on top, the bits of monitor sticking up will be hidden.
3. Software. I'm playing with lots of different software to see how they work. I must admit, it all all looks very realistic. We have built two of the lower spec machines to run the instrument displays and will start to build the main box soon.
More on this later.
The priorities now are to get the base finished so we can attach the frames. Get the glareshield on so that we can build the frame on top of that for the 4 monitors giving the outside view. At that stage we should be able to fly it using computer controls, but get an idea of how it will all look when it's finished.
DrJim
1. We have build the platform to stand the simulator on. We used pallets. Of course, one pallet wasn't wide enough and two was too wide so we ended up cutting and the base is 1 1/2 pallets wide by 2 pallets long. The pallets are rectangular so the base is 2.4m by 1.8m. We braced them all together and screwed everything tight. Then we discussed whether or not it should be be mobile. We ummed and ahhed and decided it should. It would've taken too many wheels to be stable so we hit upon the idea of office chair bases. Luckily, there is a bulk rubbish collection nearby so we found 6 office chairs, stripped the bases and fastened those to the pallets. I forgot to take a picture before we turned it over ... but it looked like this sketch
Turned over ... it looks like this
We are going to skin it with 6mm MDF and I have a nice piece of dark blue carpet to put over it.
2. We (are almost) finished the frames. The Cap and FO frames are built with their front panels on. The Centre frame is built but there are problems with the front panel.
In the aircraft, The centre frame houses 2 LCDs in the centre for the engine management displays, the lading gear hardware and lights on the right and standby instruments on the left. The standby instruments are analogue duplicates of the main flying instruments in case the glass ones fail. The centre frame has a 19" CRT on it's side to house the LCDs (one above the other). There isn't enough space to have the standby instruments so we will probably just print dummies as they are redundant anyway. Once the glareshield goes on top, the bits of monitor sticking up will be hidden.
3. Software. I'm playing with lots of different software to see how they work. I must admit, it all all looks very realistic. We have built two of the lower spec machines to run the instrument displays and will start to build the main box soon.
The priorities now are to get the base finished so we can attach the frames. Get the glareshield on so that we can build the frame on top of that for the 4 monitors giving the outside view. At that stage we should be able to fly it using computer controls, but get an idea of how it will all look when it's finished.
DrJim
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