THINGS TO CONSIDER WHEN PLANNING YOUR COCKPIT
Questions:
If you're even thinking about building a cockpit you are probably already the type of flight 
simmer who wants a more realistic experience. Often when glancing through the various 
web sites looking at pictures of those who have built their own, you come to a few realizations 
and questions:  

1.	How much money you will need
2.	What tools this will take to build
3.	The space it will take to build the parts and assemble the subassemblies
4.	The space it will take to actually put it all together - where will you put it 
5.	How much do you know about woodworking or metalworking
6.	How much do you know about electronics or wiring
7.	How capable are you of connecting the computer software and hardware
8.	How much time is this going to require - will I ever fly again, soon
9.	What kind of airplane do I want to fly

Currently the opportunity for building your own cockpit has never been better. 
Computer equipment has dropped dramatically in price, there are many different 
hardware control products (yokes, throttles, rudders, etc) to choose from, 
ready made panels with and without hardware are available, keyboard emulators 
which allow you to use actual switches just like the real thing. Custom made 
software designed to simulate all the actual functions of a real Boeing or 
Airbus.
If you're still reading this, then perhaps most of those 9 items above aren't 
going to stop you from building your dream. That's good because there are lots 
of ways to build that dream cockpit that only involve a few of those items or 
maybe just some of each.

Which aircraft should I choose?

When deciding on aircraft type you should consider the following:

1.	With a cockpit, you can fly Microsoft Flight Simulator using the scenery and
 aircraft and many of the utilities and add-ons but likely won't want the cockpit 
layouts and views.

2.	The instruments, if "Glass Cockpit" style, will be displayed on pc monitors, one o
r more instruments per. You might want to display the analog instruments separately 
if it's important to you or your aircraft model. Some custom software has both analog 
and digital already supplied. The best examples are Project Magenta and FreeFD.

3.	You will need a decent size monitor or LCD projector to display the outside front view.

4.	You may need a monitor for the navigation and flight management instruments
 depending on how elaborate or realistic you want it to be.

5.	Typically you should plan on 1 PC for every Monitor. A typical setup as the one 
I just described is 3 pc's and 3 monitors. You'll need at least one more pc and monitor 
if you want to build a first officer (right) side as well as the Capt' (left) side of the cockpit.

6.	The main PC holding your flight sim program needs to be the workhorse and you
 already know what that means. A Pentium 3 or similar running at a  minimum 800 MHz 
with lots of RAM, a high-end video card and lots of hard drive space for scenery is a must. 
You can use Win98 or ME but you should use the same operating systems on each of 
your pc's just to keep the troubleshooting simple.

7.	From this main pc you will network (not a dirty word ….. you will not believe how
 easy this is to accomplish) the other pc's which are running your various cockpit 
instrument images.

8.	These other instrument pc's can be much less powerful; Pentium 2 - 300 MHz is
 plenty for most applications. Much less money is needed for ram, video cards and 
hard drives and you don't need soundcards.

9.	Will you use your existing control yokes, sticks, rudders, etc or will you build you
r own? Most commercial products are easily adapted to or can be modified to work 
very nicely on your project.

10.	Will you be using the switches, knobs, levers, etc to emulate keyboard strokes or 
will they be there just for looks? Nothing neater than a cockpit with lots of switches. 

11.	Emulating keyboard strokes will require hardware such as the EPIC card system. 
You should budget approximately $1,400 US to manage all the functions you will need 
for a typical cockpit. This does not include the switches which are separate and whose 
cost will vary depending on the style, type, quality and source. You will also need 
LED's both digits and lights for radios, autopilot, warnings, etc. All of this involves 
lot's of wiring, soldering and considerable although simple programming which is 
explained in the hardware documentation. I built my first cockpit using the EPIC 
system not having any programming experience and survived. Believe me, nothing 
is as satisfying or thrilling as pushing and pulling those switches and knobs and seeing 
your cockpit come to life!

12.	If due to budget, time, or both, you want to add these functioning switches later y
ou can still build the cockpit, keeping in mind that you will need to use the keyboard; 
incorporate possibly an add on such as the PAL or ACP Compact unit; or simply keep 
some of the current flight sim cockpit images in your front view and use the mouse 
just like you did before.

Among many things I've learned building these things, the most important was 
to get the project to the stage where I could get Flight Sim up and running. 
It will serve to "dry run" some of the monitor, instrument locations and 
setups you have, allow you to make better decisions on how you will control 
FS, both switches and controls, provide insight into what additional software 
you want to use, and most important; it provides the motivation to keep 
building and improving. Too much time between flying dulls the enthusiasm. 
Our next tutorial will look at the subject of how to start constructing.


Ron Wiens