As I am now retired, and have a lot of time on my hands, I am going to build a home cockpit for my flight simming.With the huge amount of commercially available aircraft out there, I would like someone to give me some input on which aircraft is best suited for home cockpit use. I need to know which aircraft best supports keyboard control of the switches and knobs, and possibly has FSUIPC offsets available.I have no plans to use FSX (at least for now), so the aircraft needs to be FS9 compatible...I'm not interested in military aircraft, nor any small GA aircraft. Commercial airliners, multi-engine turboprops, or corporate aircraft would be fine.I've researched this prior to posting here, and am not having much luck.Any insight that you could offer would be greatly appreciated, and I thank all of those who choose to respond.Thanks...Jim

Not that this addresses your question, you should look at this website, if you haven't already.http://www.flightdecksolutions.com/

Although I don't have the money or the time to build one myself, I have often pondered this same question.For me, I would want the most versatile aircraft since I would be locked in to flying only one.I would love to do a 757 but I have not seen a lot of hardware available for one. I think a 737-800 would be the best choice considering versatility and available hardware.Good luck. I would love to be in your position.

I'm not an expert on home cockpits, but off hand you're going to want something with an SDK otherwise interfacing with the aircraft is going to be tedious: you'll be forced to use something like Key2Mouse.The Level-D 767 has an SDK available. So I'd take a look at the 767, among other options.Cheers,Bran

Great information, guys.....Please keep the suggestions coming..Thanks again,Jim

Hi,I have been dreaming of this for years. I have gone so far as sketching out a generic cockpit complete with required hardware and dimensions. Your posting above prompted me to go find it but alas I have misplaced it. At the time, I figured it would cost me too much and where would I put it? I gave it up but might still do it someday when I'm in your (enviable) position. I would go pretty much as generic as possible if it were me doing it. I might want to do bush flying someday and that would be hard to do in a heavy.Here are a few links I borrowed ideas from. Enjoy.http://www.davekent.fsnet.co.uk/cockpit_home_page.htmhttp://www.interfold.com/gcompc/http://home.wxs.nl/~jarkest/home.htmlPlease keep updating this now and then to let us know what you decide. I am very interested. Dolph

Hi,I would love to build a Boeing 767 in my garage. However, if you look around at the hardware that is available, the Boeing 737 airliner is the best option at this point in time.The best place to start is to have a look at the following web site.http://www.flightdecksolutions.com

http://www.mycockpit.org/forums is a really good resource. Really friendly forums and lots of clever builders congregate there.CheersJames

TrackIR4 is much, much cheaper and in addition puts you in ALL your cockpits.I never fly now without it.