Hello All,First and Foremost I just want to say I really admire what many of yall have done for all of the new guys getting involved in this hobby. Thank you for all of your knowledge. Ok so Let me give all the rundown. I am currently working towards my PPL and have been involved with Naval Aviation for the past 6years I had the lucky Oppurt. To launch and recover aircraft for the usn!!!.Because of the birth of my daughter and wanting to spend more time with my wife i decided to give up the single military life and settle down. Since being out ive been working in ground school towards my ppl and being a Dad!!. During my GS. about 3 months ago i got the chance to fly our airfields Sim. Oh my god Looking at it started me to think HMMM.. This doesnt look to bad? So i Picked up a copy of fs2004. Alast the dream began!. After much convincing and multiple nights sitting in front of a 19in screen with a saitek joystick it dawned on me "this isnt going to cut it !!!. So my Adventure begins! Ive been doing much reading And planning ON all you guys have done your websites Pictures Etc..Ive began Building my frame and Will post pictures Soon. I have just a few questions to boggle a few of yalls minds! My father in law was throwing out a 42' rear Projection Tv so i decided to pick it up and disasemble to see if i can get it to work unfourt. 2 of the bulbs are burned so my question is there is alot of elect. components im wondering if icould savage any? 2 There is 3 screens it looks like is it possible to use ? 4 my last question for now is Im trying to figure out the radio stack since ive chosen this as my first task at hand with the fram completed and controls in place i think this maybe a start for me? Ive been looking at lcd displays and im not sure if i can handle the programing as my backround is aviation and not IT? I once again thank you to everyone for all you have done to make this hobby known. It is very much appreciated !!take care and hope to see you in the sky sometime v/rtony

Well...regarding the rear projection TV it's not easy to tell you what elec. components you can recover or you can't.I used to repair TV and hi-fi for many years in the past and surely if there are two of three burnt bulbs I wouldn't recover anything from those boards...only resistors and some diode if I have tested them previously with a multimeter.Everything you try to "replicate" has its own difficulties so I think you can start from any point...the radio stack is a good deal.You will probably "face" with rotary encoders used to select the radio frequency.But you didn't tell us one thing: what kind of interface are you using for your cockpit? IOCards, FSBUS, EPIC or something else?Maybe we can help you better with more info.Regards,Bob

well Im not to sure about the interface i was looking at epic but it looks alittle to complicated for me. ive thought about phidgets or using keyboard encoder because i feel its allittle easier my base for my Sim is Ga since that is what im trying to achieve at the moment eventually i would like to build something to fit 2 pilots but for now basic controls lg, lights, startup radio as far as gauges at the moment i will be using pm software for Ga. throttle at the moment i will be dissasembling my current joy stick for pots and will try to customize my own.well see how it goes but basically enough to allow me to not use the keyboard and fly basic aircraft because as ive seen in this hobby your never offic. DONE!!! thank you vr tony

Welcome Tony to AVSIM and the hobby. Thank you for your Naval service to our country.I started out much the same as you. My first

EPIC is pretty much obsolete by many options out there. I have been looking at simboards (www.flightdecktechnology.com) pretty hard lately, but until my software is done and I have a place to build my pit, all I will be doing is looking. I have contacted them about getting my software to talk to theirs and they surprised me by their response time. Very quick indeed. They helped me get on my way and even helped with the programming aspect as much as I could understand. Customer service is great so far. I cant wait until I'm a PAYING customer.IOCARDS has a huge fanbase and userbase with lots of knowledge, so they're also a very good choice.I would suggest doing something modular for GA, something that could be used as a single/multi-pilot aircraft and goes single/twin aircraft just by changing the throttle quadrant out. I've seen some CH products out there that fit pretty well and can swap out like I suggest. You can fly that cessna one flight, swap out the throttle quadrant for a twin and fly the Seneca the next flight. I was thinking GA when I started but was attracted by the 737 and changed designs after figuring out my concept GA.Plan what you want first before you start building anything so you don't waste time and materials.

Savage rear projection TV parts? By all means try to dismantle the projection screen, it has a big fresnel lens (basically a big magnifying glass). It can be put in front of your flightsim monitor and will magnify and add a sense of dept. I have one from a a 40" RPTV and I love it. For some ideas check http://www.simprojects.nl/adding_a_freshnel_lens.htmRoland

Thank you everyone for all of your Knowledge and input it is all appreciated . Roland I want to say thank you for publishing your site it has inspired me very much in my decisions and planing I have dismantled the rptv and removed the lens i think? there were 3 screens that came out a very dark screen and one that I belive is the fresnel i posted it infront of my monitor but realy didnt get good progress unless its directly infront i dont know if i can use this but you seem to be the pro on this stuff? Can you tell me if this screen is ok to use ? i can provide you with model # etc ?

The plastic screen with the circular grooves is the fresnel. It should act as a magnifying glass, and should be made of transparent plastic. The fresnel lens I got was from an old Toshiba RPTV from the junkyard. On my lens there is a small sticker saying "Acrylens TM made in Japan, 395996". It is placed about 20~30cm in front of the monitor. I have seen newer lenses in modern RPTV's that use milk-white plastic for the lens. This is for diffusing purposes needed in rear projection, but unfortunately it cannot be used for our purpose.

Hi: Just some extra ideas. Go to www.hagstromelectronics.com and check out their keyboard emulator. You can connect up to 72 switches to your flight simulator. Also, dont go too crazy with that rear projection and fresnel lenses kinda get glarey at night. Projectors are kind of cheap nowadays and for what you would pay for 2 or 3 monitors, you could buy a projector and get an 8 foot view. [email protected]