FMC Hardware

[Andy764 0]

Hi All.

Looking for any owners with opinions/advice.

Looking at purchasing an FMC for use with the PMDG 737NGX,  The two on my radar at present are the Open Cockpits FMC https://www.opencockpits.com/index.php/en/products-en/item/FMC B-737 V3 Mounted & ready?category_id=82 and the Flight Deck Solutions version. https://flightdeck-solutions.myshopify.com/collections/b737ng/products/fds-b737ng-pro-mx-cdu-color-vga  FDS is slightly more expensive but both are ball park the same price once converted to Pounds. 

What are your thoughts.  It is a fair amount of money so I would appreciate comments from people who own either of them.

 

Many thanks

Andy

 

 

[Gnacino 48]

There is an excellent post on Youtube regaring all three of these 

Gnacino

[nas123 160]

If you go for the Opencockpits FMC module, you can build a PMDG B737NGX cockpit module by module with p&p OC4BAv4 software

[seedosip 0]

On 2/12/2019 at 6:11 PM, nas123 said:

If you go for the Opencockpits FMC module, you can build a PMDG B737NGX cockpit module by module with p&p OC4BAv4 software

That's what I am using as well. But in my case I have just bought the FMC kit and keys card, after a few days of soldering I got a working FMC. As per screen, I use one common 13" display for lower EICAS and FMC. 

Cheers,

Sergej

[Andy764 0]

Thanks to those that replied.  Been doing a fair amount of investigating myself,  after all its not an amount of money just to throw away.. 

So. 

The companies I looked at are:

Open Cockpits

Emailed this lot six times with a couple of easy questions.  Not a single response.  Not even an acknowledgement.  Did it via the webste and also to the sales@ address. 

This was the cheapest of the brands but frankly if they cant be bothered to answer a question relating to me spending money with them, The chances of them answering any support emails is minimal they have your money by that point they clearly don't care.  Apparently lack of communication  is a common thing with Open Cockpits.  

Product disregarded due to total lack of customer service. 

CP Flight 

Based in Italy, these guys were surprisingly the most expensive of the three by a significant amount.   Also they appear to not answer customer service/emails

Product disregarded due to again no customer service and a ridiculously high price tag. 

Flight Deck solutions. 

These guys were touted as being very expensive however for a better made solid product made by a company who manufactures actual simulator parts the cost was less than CP flight and more importantly the email I sent with a couple of questions was answered within 5 MINS.  The response time and the answers and explanations given totally sold me on this company.  Other reviews of their products all indicate product and the support is top notch and they look after their customers.   Not the cheapest but without question this in my opinion is the best way to go. 

I hope that helps anybody else looking. 

 

Andy

 

[Captain Kevin 586]

I will confirm that Flight Deck Solutions has pretty good customer service and a fairly fast response time. I was looking at possibly getting the throttle quadrant for the Boeing 747-400. Not only did they manage to respond within a few hours, given that I had e-mailed them at the end of the day, they actually refused to take my money because when I contacted them with my question, I included a picture of my setup since it wasn't clear from their website just exactly how the throttle quadrant was built. They confirmed that given the way their throttle quadrant was built, it was not going to work with my setup.

[dhsimmonsfsx 0]

Flight Deck Solutions builds products for the Bombardier Lear 45XR. The FMC is different from the Boeing FMC. 5 left right buttons instead of six.