I have the Bodnar joystick controller installed (X version) and I must say that it seems amazing. I thought my control issued where with the cheap pots that I am using (not the hacked Saitek Aviator) but I was wrong, with the Bodnar unit everything is smooooooth! I like it! Very easy to hook up and calibrate, it works out of the box. Here is to Leo on this one! (Cheers)

No pictures yet, I have been busy strafing AA sites, running pesky P51's off of my airfields and chasing tommy around the western front!

More later!

No comments? Well...ok. I will post more pictures anyhow

I have it moved and painted (mostly). I have reworked the instrument panel but have no new pictures of it as yet.

Home Sweet Home. This is a walk-in closet in an unused bedroom.



Under the hood again, black paint to highlight the PC parts. In the background you can see the Leo Bodnar BU0836X, it is well worth purchasing the quick connect version. Oh boy did this make a difference in controls. I was going to redo my pots with hall effect but I think I will leave it alone, it works increadibly well.



You can see the wiring mess (temporary I hope) from the buttons. I have a rotary switch and a several momentary toggles on thier way.



A view of the projector mount. It needs to be properly mounted and the wires routed but I plan on removing it to paint the walls. I have not yet decided on black or dark blue. I am leaning toward a medium blue though (so we do not have to repaint when we sell this monsterous house)



A couple showing the cockpit itself. I have the rudders set at the perfect distance (for me) and the joystick is mounted on a pedestal. I used a piece of that rubber roofing with a hole in the middle to make the stick self centering.



Hanging on the left combing you can see the headset I made to hold the Freetrack 3-point clip and my microphone. (that stick with a handle is so I can turn the lights off, lol.)



There it is so far. I need to finish the throttle quadrent (oh boy does that work nice) and build some other 'extras', like perminently mount the USB port near my shoulder (for the FreeTrack head clip), a port for my mic, a set of pots for trims, some push pull pots on the dash for magneto and radiator. I will need another Leo Bodnar unit for the extra pots (Oh darn! Excellent quality units, did I mention that?)

It does look cool, indeed! I like the canvas skin you put on the outside of the 'pit and the leather trim is icing on the cake.
Is that an optical drive that you have mounted on your control panel, so you can access a disc from the pilots seat?
What ideas have you had about your sound? I saw a pair of headphones in one shot, but are you planning on any small speakers around the cockpit?
Excellent update pics...but now that its all together, well it have to stay in that room forever? That door is not that wide!

Regards,
Derek

I really have to say PropNut that you have done a superb job on that simpit. I love that you based it on a SE5a, I don't think I ever seen a pit done in the likeness of a WW1 plane, very cool. The sliding seat is a simple, elegant and extremely practical solution to getting in and out, genius. It's well thought/planned out, the craftsmanship looks excellent and the fact you put the computer where the engine would be makes soooooo much sense and really tidys up your pit and man cave. Once you have finished all the cord/wire wrangling it will be that much more awesome. Lastly the leather is just such a neat touch, really does make the pit look like a WW1 scout fuselage.

Quite inspiring to me to get mine done!

Derek, the canvas is actually just plywood skin painted using a gradually darker grey...I like how it turned out.

The leather trim looks pretty good but I still need to finish the combing above the instrument panel (when that is done anyway).

Yes, that is the DVD drive in the panel, just below that you can see the on/off (PC) switch, reset switch and HD light, all the PC controls are in the panel.

As far as sound goes...I am using an older Creative 5.1 sound system. There is a bass unit under the front of the pit (in front of the rudder pedals) for that shake (I am going to do transducer (sp?) units someday for the real shake effects) and left/right speakers by the pilots shoulders (just inside the pit next to the seat) for stereo effects. It sounds really good. The speaker controls are located just in front of the trackball on the right.

I built this simpit to be modular and transportable. Everything plugs in (Stick, pedals, throttles, etc), the two sides are bolted in and fit together with dowels, the front unit sits on the base pedestal and screws down. The seat is on quick disconnect drawer slides (two 24" slides bolted together for 48" (+ 2" over-travel) so it is easy to remove. So yes, it will fit through the door easily. Each peice is actually very light as they are ribbed and built of 1/8" plywood.

Thanks for the encouragement Derek!

Redhornet, thanks man, it is fun to build this and post to see the reaction I get (so far all is positive). Contrary to what you think, it is not at all well thought out, lol. I pretty much make it up as I go along. There are many things I would do different if I were making these in a production shop. I appreceate the kind comments none the less. I was looking at my cord/wiring mess earlier today and scratching my head...so many tangled wires!!!

David

Impressive!


You need a Clapper(tm)!

BTW, I'm not that impressed with transducers. It's not so much that they don't work well, it;s that they take all bass and convert it into vibration - not just the bass you want.So you get equal shake from distant arty rumbles as from bullet impacts on your ship and motor noise. I don't find that convincing.

If you could set up a sim so it only output bass to the transducer that was relevant (maybe through a seperate sound card) then it would be worth it. Otherwise, the shake from your subwoofer is about as good as it gets.

Good news about the Bodnar unit - I was considering getting an Aviator to strip down but it seems like the Bodnar is the way to go.

Pak,
I understand what you say about the transducers, I think the vibration would be heavier for the bass inside your plane than it would be for those sources outside. (unless you are like me and crash right next to a German "88" emplacement, lol.) I may or may not fiddle with those but it will be much later...so many other nifty things to try out right now.

The Clapper!! Why didnt I think of that?!

I was using a hacked Aviator joystick (the guts) and I can tell you that the Bodnar unit is WAY better (much more precise). I am going to pick up another for more axis ( I find I need/want around 14 total)

I am certainly no expert on the electronics of sound cards or transducers but i have managed to retain a little bit of info from more learned folks here about such things.
pak, with an out of the box tarnsducer, or shaker, like the "Buttkicker" I do beliebe it takes the bass output and rruns it through its own amplifier before sending it to the shaker attached to your chair. This way you can still have your sub pushing some air on those low frequency sounds while the buttkicker is shaking your behind.

Mike Powell is the expert on this, especially since it was his design, but the book "Building Recreational Flight Simulators" has a design for a DIY transducer amp. I haven't read that chapter completely but I do believe it would give you the same end result. Meaning I think it would give you control of the transducer amp, seperate from your other speakers.

With the bass output from your sound card, if you split it to a powered subwoofer AND a transducer amp it would seem to give you the kind of control y'all are talking about.
What i would really like to find is an affordable mini-amp solution for the outputs from my sound card to the R/L, front & rear channel speakers.
Derek

Thanks MudPuppy, I have a transducer and it does work as you describe. What I was was whinging about was the fact that there is no way to control which sounds it reacts to. There is a built-in low-pass filter, but this only filters sound by how high or low pitched they are.

The transducer treats all high amplitude, low frequency sounds as equal. It would be more convincing if sims supported a seperate audio channel just for transducer effects. So you'd get the vibration of the engine and weapons, but not the music's bass or the rumble of distant artillery.
I suspect that if one had another soundcard, one could write a plugin that accomplished this for those games that support plugins.

Apologies for the thread hijack.

Feel free, I am learning stuff. I agree it would be nice to have a threaded audio track, where you could assign sounds sources.