Hi everyone,

 

I'm a real life pilot, and all of my training so far has been in Cessna 172s with steam gauges. The aircraft club I'm a member of has a bonanza F33A that's all glass panel. I'd like to use FSX to help learn both how to fly the complex airplane, as well as learn the glass panel stuff. My question is - how hard is it to modify the panel to match what our club's plane has?  I've never played with modding panels, and truthfully would not want to spend a lot of time doing this - I think I'd like to just quickly get stuff in approximate place, and not worry so much about a perfect fit and finish.

 

Our club's plane has a Garmin G500 PFD / MFD, a Garmin GNS530W, GNS430W, a JPI EDM-930 digital engine monitor, and a wx-500 stormscope.

 

Is this something I could do in a few days, or am I looking at investing weeks of time in this? (I'm not even sure if the above components are available for purchase / free, let alone how to "wire" them all up so they work properly together.

 

Thanks in advance!

Scott

I looked for a freeware F33A and all I found was the payware Carenado one, If you can find a F33 with steam gauges it might be possible to swap or insert the gauges in a sub window. Bob.

By the end of your post, it sounds like you want to build a physical home cickpit. That takes a lot of time, effort and money. I would keep anything you want to do in flight simulator itself and buy a good yoke and pedals instead.

 

Swapping guages in and out of Carenado airplanes isn't possible because the gauges are integrated into the cockpit. I know most Carenado airplanes come with 3rd party installers so you can use your Reality XP gauges in those airplanes. I do not believe there is a quality G500 simulation available other than the one from Garmin itself.

 

I would say get the A36 from Carenado. Its not the F33 but it does have the EFD1000, so you would get used to the speed tape, flight director, EHSI... Things like that. Get the RealityXP 430 as well. 1 for 1 realistic to the actual unit because it uses the real trainer. It also integrates directly into the Carenado panel. I don't think you can go wrong with this setup. Have fun and congrats on moving up into a Bonanza!

 

http://www.carenado.com/CarSite/Portal/index.php

 

http://www.reality-xp.com/flightsim/gns430/

I've done a fair amount of modifications to my F33, but the main six pack gauges can not be removed and a G500 glass panel installed in it's place.

 

The closest thing that I know of, is the Carenado Malibu Jetprop which comes with G500 and GNS installed in the panel.

 

If you are looking to add a GNS430 to the Carenado F33, you are in luck, for that is fully supported.

Even a GTN650 can be installed.

 

Send me a PM if you would like to discuss..

Hi everyone, I appreciate the replies. Sounds like it's not going to be easy to get where I wanted to go. Couple of items related to the above:

 

1. When I said "wiring up the controls", what I meant was editing the controls properly so that the 530W and 430W properly drive the G500, etc. Not building any type of "real" cockpit.

 

2. When it's said that "gauges can't be swapped in Carenado because they are built right into the panel", I want to clarify what this means. Does it mean I can remove the gauges, but then it leaves 6 "holes" in the panel? I'm 100% good with this - I am not trying to make this pretty, just functional.

 

3. Knowing nothing about panel work in FSX, would it be possible to add a G500 and just make it "slightly in front" of the other gauges so it blocks them out?

 

Again, goal here isn't for perfect (or even good) looks - it's to set up a plane that I can practice the avionics with and learn how to fly a bonanza with. If that isn't really possible, I may go with the Carenado F33a for learning to fly the bonanza, and then the carenado Malibu for learning the G500 on. But is the G500 in the Malibu "close enough" to actually learn on (remember I'm VFR not IFR so I don't need any pages that deal with IFR stuff)

 

Thanks!

Scott

Scott, none of these glass gauges are "close enough" to actually learn on... except for the Reality XP GNS gauges and the Flight1 GTN gauges which both use the actual Garmin Trainer software to provide the functionality.

 

But having said that.. what do you need for VFR, other than the standard steam gauges and a GPS for situational awareness?

 

Send me a PM with your email address and I'll send you some pictures of my F33..